Alexandra Palace

Was great, phew saturday was a bit of a marathon, there for 9 hours, was ill on the way home as well... breakdown was nice and quick tday though, disregarding the wretched gravell.....

Ive just got home ater getting on the megabus at 11:45 last night... none of you lot have anything to complain about travelwise!

I can't imagine ever going if I lived in the North! I wonder if there isn't a case for a Northern version of the show? Surely there are as many North based sailors as Southerners? Perhaps it could alternate between a Northern venue and a Southern one.

Just a thought!

As usual the show was great, although having been in the RYA conferance in the morning had to run around the show a bit. New boats looked awesome especially the DAEMON, it made Subtle Knife look like it had been built in someones loft with no lights on !
The RYA conferance was very disappointing and the waffle about club pro's was totally missing the mark for all but the biggest clubs. Expected the RYA to come up with some useful assistance on helping and improving club racing but all they suceeded in doing was showing how ignorant they are especially with all the corporate bullsh*t that they were spouting, terms such as ,"going forward" and "our baseline shows ...". This kind of language is infuriating enough at work because silly little twerps think its cool and fashionable but when its being spoken by your sports ruling body its just stupid.
Back to the actual show I thought the general attitudes of the guys on stands was really good. Over the years some of the top guys have been ponsing about looking down there noses at us but this year I felt like people were much friendlier. Had great chats with the guys on the 18ft Skiff, 12ft Skiff, RS, Graduate, YW Dayboat and ISO stands and it was good to meet up with all of the lads from Salford Uni SC 1995-1999 and the RS600 guys from 2000-2004.

Paul Craig
RS700 844

Craiggo Wrote

'The RYA conferance was very disappointing and the waffle about club pro's was totally missing the mark for all but the biggest clubs'

The thing about that I found particularly amusing was the chap calling himself the 'small club pro'. During his talk he mentioned part of his job being the maintenance of club boat park spaces of which there were over 400. Allowing for a percentage of the club's boats being two handers then a reasonable estimate must place this 'small' club's membership in the 600 plus range. Round these parts (Cornwall) for a dinghy club that's a 'rather large club'. As for the other so called 'large' club it apparently has a turnover in excess of £1 million a year, more like a PLC than a club.

I'm not knocking the concept of club pro, but I do sometimes wonder if the RYA exists in a parallel universe where the UK consists exclusively of Surrey and Hampshire.

Takes big regional chip off shoulder