Try Sail Day at Concord Ryde Sailing Club

18-Dec-2009
On 1st November, 2009, as it has done in many years past, Concord & Ryde Sailing Club Inc participated in the annual Try Sail Day which is promoted by BIA and Yachting NSW. CRSC also did its own promotion by submitting its own articles to local newspapers as well as e-mails to local schools and information also went to the local Scout Group for distribution amongst its members. In addition 800 fliers were printed and a letter box drop was made in the area; a further promotion of this event was a segment shown on the TV show “Sydney Weekender” the night before.

The day itself turned out to be an ideal day weather wise for such an event and many of the public turned up for a sail. Our members on the Registration Desk were kept extremely busy from early in the morning until late afternoon registering over 200 people for a sail with a number going around a second time, some 300 were put on the water during the day. Just over half of these folk came from our local area with 50% of registrations under 18 years of age. Many, particularly the youngsters, were very excited for their first sail in a sailing boat, the older ones were only a little more subdued.

It was a very successful day for our Club with the final 6 places in our November training course being filled within an hour and during the day we had another 42 registrations for training courses. Of these many have confirmed their bookings and we will need to run two further courses in the second half of the season.

Naturally this was a very big logistical exercise for our Club with around 50 members assisting in various aspects including those involved in our canteen and barbecue. Of these some 20 of members supplied their sailing boats which spent a lot of time on the water with excited novices. These boats were from all of our classes with Maricats, Tasars, NS14s and Herons, as well our Spiral skippers did not miss out as some sailed two up on the day to give our visitors a taste of sailing. It must be remembered that all Club members involved had either sailed in CRSC events or worked in some official Club capacity on the Saturday before turning up again the next day to promote sailing to the members of the public.

CRSC Management Committee thought that this was a very worthwhile event thanks to the dedication of Club members who took part. They were all very weary at the end of Sunday but felt that something had been achieved with the Try Sail Day. We have been informed that our Club is the most popular sailing club participating in this event and the presence of the numbers of first time sailors and Club members helping out certainly point to this.

Concord & Ryde Sailing Club Inc in conjunction with Yachting NSW is also running school holiday sailing camps during 2010 with the first from 19th to 22nd January – see Yachting NSW website for details. Positions are limited and from our Try Sail Day 6 youngsters showed interest and were registered.

Ron Burwood.
CRSC Archivist.
For more information:
http://www.concordrydesailing.org/