Huntingdon Radio Yacht Club's 'Afternoon on the River'
by Andy Start 21 Aug 00:50 PDT
17 August 2024
Huntingdon Radio Yacht Club's 'Afternoon on the River' © Stephen Brown, Andy Start
Huntingdon Radio Yacht Club are a Radio Sailing club based at Hunts Sailing Club in St Ives, our normal activities are racing on a Saturday morning every week, during the summer we race on Monday evening, and casual sailing on Wednesday afternoons, but we had a plan to take our sport to the public, read on.
While having a post racing beer following our DF95 Twilight series a few weeks ago, Andy Johnson, the club training officer suggested, "Why don't we have an afternoon sailing on the River Great Ouse from St Ives Quay? We could have a jolly time on the river for our members, and at £0.50p a go, raise some money for our favourite charity, the RNLI."
And so the seed was sown.
A plan was formulated, members press ganged (they didn't need much pressing) into joining in, and the following few weeks the cogs in the wheels to set the thing in motion began.
We had to get the OK from the Environment Agency, which they were very happy to help, the St Ives Electric Riverboat Co have a pontoon at river level which we could launch from, and a local river cruiser provided "recovery from weed" services on his tender, (two-way radio was a godsend) he was very busy!
After our normal Saturday morning's racing, our marks were loaded into a car and taken to the local marina, here they were loaded into a boat, and along with five skippers and five boats, all were motored upstream to the Quay, perimeter marks to keep the cruisers at bay were dropped and a simple upwind/downwind course was laid for any racing that may take place.
The crowds had already gathered on the Quayside and soon we were busy giving instruction, and demonstrations on sailing were given throughout the afternoon, with a few races thrown in for good measure, its amazing how much attention our starting machine attracts people's attention.
With Martin Brooking & Alan "Cookie" Cooke on front of house, Andy Baldock & Andy Johnson being first line "let me show you how this works" team, and everyone else either sailing or also passing a controller onto a willing member of the public.
To everyone else, Steve "The Cake" Brown, Dave Preston, Ben Harker, Mike Henton, Andy Wa (photo's), Ben Wallace & Hayden Wallace (our youngest member at age 11) who was showing of his skills to his age group and older.
It did get very busy!
So, a couple of stats from the day:
- Our website received over 100 hits yesterday from QR code scans
- Our RNLI collection box collected £58.96
I think we all had a great afternoon in the sunshine, and also for two and a half hours, bought some extra smiles to the Quay, we are a busy club generally, but this was great fun for all the members present, and all agreed it was a fantastic way to spend the afternoon, the weather was a very pleasant 24 degrees, which also made the day something very special.
The general plan for the day was to show the public our sport, and hopefully pick up a few members along the way, we have one new member from the pre-event promotional activity, the next member to join will be club member number 40!!
Of course a few of us had to end the day for a wash up, and a couple of cold ones went down a treat.
About our Sport
Huntingdon RYC is a member of the MYA (Model Yachting Association) www.mya-uk.org.uk
There are over 100 club nationally, with over 2000 members, the country split into regions, we sit within the Eastern District along with 11 other clubs.
We have club racing weekly, there are also regional events, national events and also the World Championship event, this year being held in Australia in September, We are happy to report one of our members has qualified to represent the UK in Australia
If you would like to get in touch with us, please do so via our web site hryc.co.uk
We would be happy to hear from you and answer any questions you may have.