6. Commodore’s Report
Well, this year has certainly been unexpected, as a new Commodore I had lots of ideas of how we could move the club forwards, how we would build the membership, develop the sailing, think about our environmental foot print, maybe push for the club of the year award.
What I am very pleased to announce, even with all this uncertainty, the club has successfully moved forward. The pandemic has given us the opportunity to think about the things we do, look at the ways we have done them in the past and make positive change. As a club membership we should all be incredibly positive about what we have achieved and what the future will bring.
We have a superb committee, full of proactive people and it’s been fantastic from my point of view to make new friends, have a laugh and at the same time, carry out the clubs activities and make improvements in all aspects of the club.
We introduced management by WhatsApp and Zoom. We have broken down some of the tasks into smaller chunks. Suddenly, we have plenty of conversation (banter), decisions could be taken straight away without waiting for the next monthly committee meeting. Things started to happen.
We moved to Monday evening catch up Zoom meetings, mostly about 45 minutes, ok a couple of times slightly longer. Originally driven by the Covid challenge of keeping ourselves aligned with the ever changing national and local restrictions, but these have continued to be very well attended and have acted as an opportunity to check with others and agree the main spends with the Treasurer!
An example being the introduction of the Covid19 Risk Assessments. From initial discussions between myself and Jerry, we got to the outline assessments, including an overall traffic light dashboard, Alan came onboard to help update the website so we could update “inflight”. We presented to the committee via WhatsApp, published, and in only a few days we had a visible Covid risk assessment system which I has proud to push out to other clubs, the Restart Sailing Facebook group, Yorkshire Water and the RYA, as a good practise example. We received some brilliant feedback and visibility as a leading club. Perfect.
Youth (the clubs future)
We have introduced youth onto the committee. Both Charli and Oliver have made very positive contributions to both the General committee and the Sailing committee zoom meetings/WhatsApp groups. Well done both. Its been great to have your views and for taking on the ethos of doing as you say.
Sailing Activities (Vice Commodore Jerry Hannabuss, Chris Muxworthy, Olli Mills, Charli Fensom)
Once we were able to introduce sailing activities, Jerry and team, planned out the Ad-hoc sailing, with all the associated restriction. I was impressed to see how this worked out, small groups of people getting together to go sailing, any evening of the
week, whenever the weather suited. This got us going again. This progressed into running additional social sailing evenings, introduced racing, including additional starts for rising stars, youth, juniors who wanted a more relaxed version of racing. This built up to a Club Championship day, where the youth teams took the overall honours.
Its been very pleasing to see a good turnout of boats throughout the year, very positive to see the kids on the water having fun, whether that be pottering around and or joining in the racing. We do not mind what any member does, you can socially sail, race or just potter around, just come and have a go on the water. It is about the fun.
A special mention to Martin and Cheryl who have taken on the role to look after the club boats. Wow, they certainly took that role on, all boats ready in time for the kids’ week, cleaned, polished, arranged in berths, all ropes and equipment lined up ready to go. The back and side of the club looks ace with all the organised trolley posts and berths. Its down to members now to use them. One thing we ask please, is to put it back in the same place you found it and if there are any repairs then tell them and they will sort out. An absolute brilliant job, thank you.
The Pennine RC group has steadily grown throughout the year, always good to welcome new members. A very civil activity of racing, tea and cake followed by more racing. Impressive to see so many races and to hear the banter. We can expect this to keep growing and we will build up quite a fleet.
A big thank you to Jerry for running the vast majority of the sailing on Thursday and Sundays, making sure we had rescue boat cover etc, race officer, results and the risk assessments all in line, to allow this all to happen.
Dinghy Park and Membership (Alan Waterworth)
No messing around here, we now know, who owns what and where to park it. All labelled up, with all the tyres removed from site and everyone issued with breeze blocks for the launching trollies. Sadly, for them but good news for us, we removed 18 tired boats and had a full clear up, including drainage to create another 4 usable berths. With the newly created area at the far end of the dinghy park, we are working out how best to use it, so watch that space! I am sure you will agree the dinghy park looks very smart.
Alan has also done sterling work in keeping track of the membership database and supporting the website development. He also owns the record for the most items and longest update on the weekly meeting! Thanks Alan, good fun and great work.
Kids Week/Kids club / Kids sailing (Nicholas Perry, Emily Tredoux, Ray Tredoux, Josie, Nick Oldrini)
“I see no reason why we don’t still have a kids week” was the announcement via Zoom. And that is exactly what we had, with all the Covid restrictions and risk assessments in place and run like clock work. It was an event that clubs up and down the country will be impressed with. A great article from Millie Heeley published
by Yachts and Yachting put the club out there, perfect. This was followed up with an article from Emily Tredoux, publish by the RYA. Wow, that certainly put the club out there as a positive, active club. A huge thank you to everyone, including parents, training team, non-members involved in this, brilliant work. In the words of Millie, Kids week was a “triumph in a year of loss”.
Bosun (Nigel Cappleman, Nick Oldrini)
Sadly, Nigel stood down from the role earlier in the year and we are sorry to see him leave, having put so much into the club over the years.
Up stood Nick Oldrini, who has since down loaded tractor manuals, cleaned out and repaired punctured Ribs, made sure we don’t run out of fuel and is now taking on the RIB launching trailers. We’ll have a documented RIB maintenance record to track service history and where we spend money. Nick has also announced that he will name all the ribs, we await the naming ceremony. Plus, when the club PC passed away, he sorted out a replacement. Thanks Nick, you also keep us entertained on the WhatsApp groups!
Training Centre (Joe Ready and Dominic Barnes)
A quieter year for training due to the pandemic, so we have taken the opportunity to look at the Training Centre and see how we would like the training centre to function in the next few years. More on this in the near future. Thanks to Joe for seeing us through the RYA training centre assessments and his input to all the meetings.
House Committee (Rear Commodore – Ed Corteen, Josie, Steve Spencer, John Coulton)
The pandemic has put huge restrictions into how we use all areas of the clubhouse but with lots of work arounds, PPE, signing in sheets for track and trace, the team have managed to keep things going. As usual a very big thank you to Josie, who somehow managed to support the kids week with food, as well as providing drinks and food to members on sailing days, as well as keeping the Commodore in check. Thank you very much!
“A committee update meeting story….Josie knew that someone had been in the clubhouse when it was closed to everyone, as she noticed that a dead bee had been moved…The Commodore had to confess that while installing the new wifi, he’d had to go behind the bar to turn off the old router!! but goes to show what a fantastic job Josie continues to do in looking after us all.
During the year we have installed new paper towel machines, repaired the roof, replaced a window pane, kept the grounds neat and tidy, discovered we must remove two very old freezers as they use far too much electricity, kept up with the club house cleaning, removed 380 tyres from the site and the list goes on. Thank you team.
A special thank you to John Coulton, who has sorted out the “garage” and suggesting that we take the opportunity to extend the slip way. Which comes onto
the huge thank you to Matt Fairley for taking on the “big clean up”, helping us to drive diggers, lay concrete pads, dig new drains, fill up skips, spread aggregate, remove the astroturf, landscape, replace pathways. Fantastic job Matt, we have had so much good feedback on how well the club looks, its just amazing. Thank you to everyone else who turned up on the working party days to make a difference. Well done to all the House Committee for working behind the scenes to make it a club we can be proud of.
Treasurer (John Hollis, or ”John the money” as he is known)
Many thanks to John, its great to know that we are in good hands and that we have an excellent helm on the club finances.
Secretary (Ray Evans & Jane Evans)
Whatever you want to know about the club Ray has it to hand. I know that Jane helps out with the minutes and unbelievable that you have happily done these on now a weekly basis. Plus wheeling the bins to the end of the drive every week for collection. Thank you.
Just a couple of more areas!
Team Universities
Great to meet you all, I know you share the tough ride with the Covid restrictions, thank you for keeping us in touch with your activities and supporting our risk assessments. Between us all we will get through this.
Yorkshire Water
As our landlord, and the fact that we will be hopefully signing a new lease in the near future. We have an excellent working relationship with Chris Waters who is the operational manager for Winscar, he passes on how impressed he is with the work we have put into the club grounds. We are in regular contact with Dave Shepherd from the legal team who have helped us during the lockdown, but also with many other things this year. Hopefully, we will get the new lease signed up quickly.
Overall
I wasn’t aware of everything that happened at Pennine Sailing Club before I became more involved in the committee, but so many people happily make a difference to our club community. It has turned out to be good fun and I hope we have demonstrated that fun on the zoom calls and WhatsApp groups, rather than meetings being a chore.
What these challenging times has brought home to me, is the club is built around people who share the common sport of dinghy sailing. When the lock down really kicked in, it was refreshing to see other activities to keep the members together started to appear. Virtual Sailing (my wrist injury caused by this, still isn’t fully
recovered), introduced me to the Pennine youth team and members I’ll admit to not knowing all that well. We opened a virtual bar, which for a small group, certainly covered a wide range of subjects and put the world to rights on many things. I hope you agree that the Pennine Club WhatsApp group has enabled direct updates to the ever-changing restrictions and club activities. We have 81 people on that group, it would be good to have all members on there, so please contact me and we can add you.
Pennine Sailing Club
Accounts for the period 1 November 2019 - 31 October 2020
| Income Membership Income Group subscriptions Subscriptions Berths Winter Subscriptions Total Variable Income Interest Members Insurance Events / Social Kids Week Kids@pen9 Training Open Meetings Boat Hire Donations Defib Fund Grants Clothing Insurance claims Gift aid income Miscellaneous Total Total Income |
2018/19 Actual |
2019/20 Actual |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| 3,685 12,115 1,340 |
1,575 8,660 1,510 35 |
||
| 17,140 19 145 (210) 2,470 1,312 5,583 3,544 1,340 6,656 20 |
11,780 13 (13) 1,770 172 984 1,433 440 3,433 10,000 611 88 |
||
| 20,878 | 18,933 | ||
| 38,018 | 30,713 |
Expenditure Fixed Expenditure
| Lease Gas Electric Telephone Cleaning Club Insurance Rates (Water and Council) Total Variable Expenditure House Consumables Administration Annual Prizes & Trophy Repair Rescue & Race Management Boat Fuel Club Boats RYA Subs Engine Service Committee/Support Boats Dinghy Park & site management House Repairs & Renewals Training Sailing Equipment Miscellaneous Total Total Fixed/Variable Expenditure Capital Expenditure Site Development House Development Sailing Development Total Total Expenditure Surplus/(Deficit) of Cash Total Cash at end of Period Cash in hand Yorkshire Bank Current Account Barclays Deposit Account Floats Cash Balances Accrual (gas) Reserves available for the club |
2,470 1,558 1,784 476 2,892 2,750 820 |
2,470 547 580 460 1,062 2,910 725 |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| 12,750 641 57 52 679 2,072 952 450 4,879 687 38 6,478 4,806 445 129 |
8,755 345 237 20 1,034 407 465 2,457 882 331 483 386 38 |
||
| 22,364 | 7,086 | ||
| 35,114 | 15,840 | ||
| 1,945 276 4,873 |
9,130 800 350 |
||
| 7,093 | 10,280 | ||
| 42,207 | 26,120 | ||
| (4,189) | 4,593 | ||
| 26,141 | 30,734 | ||
| 16,550 10,411 70 27,031 (890) 26,141 |
21,450 10,424 70 31,944 (1,210) 30,734 |
Pennine Sailing Club
Auditors Report
We have examined the Income and Expenditure Account which is in agreement with the book of accounts, and have obtained all the information and explanations which we consider necessary for the Audit.
In our opinion, these Accounts show a true and fair view of the club's Income and Expenditure for the year ending 31 October 2020 in stating an excess of income of £4,593
Peter Van Ruiten
Adam Perry