Weymouth
Sailing
Club

A Memorial Service for John Croydon will be held on Friday 14th October at 11:30 hrs at St Andrews Church, Preston, Weymouth. This will be followed by refreshments next door at The Spice Ship. If anyone would like to attend, it would be helpful (but far from essential!) if you could let me know so that we can manage the numbers. Greg Croydon greg.croydon@gmail.com

With the sad news of our Queen's Death I feel it is most appropriate to cancel this year's tender race. This decision has been taken with guidance from the Commodore and the GC.

Regards, Gary Owens

FINALLY..... after months of waiting for the crane... escaped to Alderney.

Naturally, that explains the recent rain.

Before sailing last weekend James Richards was given an hours experience in the Club RHIB. This was James's first return to the water since he was involved in a serious incident in Newtons Cove last June. James whilst riding upon a "ringo" had suffered a blade strike in both lower legs. It was appropriate that John Tonks organised this excursion as John took charge of the first aid at the scene.

I regret to announce that Rear Admiral John Croydon passed away on 19th July aged 93. He had been a member of the Club since 1979, sailing his Squib "Second Wind" regularly until about 10 years ago. The highlight of his time at the Club was winning the first race of the 1980 Squib Nationals and finishing 5th overall that year with son Greg as crew! He spent time on the Club Committee and was a Trustee of the Club until the charitable status was introduced recently. He donated the "Rear Admirals Cup" to the Club to promote inter fleet and inter Club racing.

The club has now published its approved Port Waste Management Plan in the Handbook area of the website under Section 9.2, and also in the Documents and Forms section.

This Plan is of significant importance to all yacht owners as it affects how you dispose of onboard sewage and International Catering Waste (food waste when returning from outside UK waters).

A copy will also be displayed on the club notice board.

We set sail from Lorient bound for the beautiful island of Ile d'Yeu in the Bay of Biscay on Friday 1st July. Initially the weather was grey and we could not help but notice black clouds ahead over La Belle Ile. The wind was supposed to go west but it stayed stubbornly on the nose as we punched tide past the Quiberon peninsula. However fortunately as we past Ile Hedic and left La Belle Ile behind the wind did turn west as forecast and we enjoyed a perfect reach in the sunshine all the way to Port Joinville on Ile d'Yeu.

After a few days and some strong South Westerlies in Camaret we managed to leave. Rising at 6am we headed for the Raz de Seine we had left ourselves 4 hours to get the tidal gate at the Raz. As we approached the wind was blowing SW 18kts and there was quite an unpleasant atlantic swell, it became obvious to us that time was going to be a little tight. The tide at the Raz runs at 8 knots once it’s in full flow. We were aiming for slack tide, we tacked to try to position ourselves to get through the gate, we realised we were struggling.

On Monday 13th June Saskia VII set sail for Roscoff on the first leg of our annual cruise.

We packed our Covid certificates and duly posted our C1331 form to the Boarder Force in Dover with full details of our boat including hull build number, radio number, call sign, passport number and a host of other apparently vital details!

We had a very light wind crossing in beautiful sunshine and a full moon later at night. As we approached Roscoff next morning our normally reliable auto pilot started to misbehave.