Long service award from the RYA

I am delighted to share with you that our very own Tony Walker has been conferred a Long Service Award by the RYA.

Tony joined Forfar Sailing Club in 1974/5 and has been a continuous member ever since. During this time he has always taken an active part in the running and development of the club, including holding various positions as committee member, Secretary and twice Commodore. Even now, he continues his strong work and community ethic as the current co-ordinator for ground and building maintenance: organising work parties and making sure that the steps and pontoons are safe, as well as cutting the grass every week!

Over the years Tony has worked with various local groups and organisations to attract new members to the club. He was key to the return of Aberdeen University Sailing Club to Forfar and continues to encourage and develop our relationship with them. He keeps in regular contact with other affiliated groups, such as the Radio Sailors and local Angling club to maintain and develop good relationships.

Tony has an incredible amount of drive and once he has set his sights on a goal, no obstacle is too great. He makes excellent use of his local contacts to ensure that the club is well supported by local companies and other clubs.

In 2021, he was instrumental in getting the “skiff project” off the ground and through to completion. Bringing together the Rotary to help with finding funding, Men’s Shed to build the skiff and Strathmore Cricket Club to provide a shed to build it in.  He also organised for students at the local secondary school to be involved. Forfar Sailing club now looks after two skiffs and encourages member of the public of all ages to take part at the various sessions that are run each week.

Recently he has worked with a local architect, local rangers, local industry and Historic Scotland to develop a storage area for the Club on St Margaret’s Inch, which is a Scheduled Monument so development is very sensitive. As always, his drive to reach a suitable solution keeps things moving forward.

Tony continues to be an active member on the water and regularly takes part in the series racing each week. Even when conditions are challenging, he is the first to say ‘come on, let’s get sailing!’.  He is also very generous with his time on the water and will pretty much go out on any boat if it helps to get someone else out on the water. A lapsed dinghy instructor, he is always available to take new sailors out and often supports young and inexperienced sailors to take the helm. He regularly engages a cadet member as his crew for club regattas and encourages everyone to get involved to the best of their ability.

We are a very small club and over the 12 years that I have been a member we have faced continual challenges with attracting new members. Tony’s unwavering support is without doubt a significant factor in securing the club’s future.

Please join me in congratulating Tony on his achievement and dedication to Forfar Sailing & Watersports Club.

Note that he is currently reluctant to receive his award at the RYA Awards Presentation & reception at the RYA Dinghy & Watersports show in Farnborough in February, due to its potential clash with the FWSC prize giving! 

All the best,

Helen Brown

Forfar Skiff Report November 2024

This week marks the second anniversary of the launch of Greg
Lockhurst
I’m delighted to report that both boats are in excellent condition and
being used extensively in the last three months we’ve had more than
60 sorties on the loch. We have attended the Broughty and Perth
Regatta, Monster the Loch on loch Ness the Tummel sprints where
we received a number of medals, we have Held our Skiffy regatta our
skiffs have been rowed all over Scotland including Caterline,
Montrose Broughty Ferry and North Berwick.
We intend to participate in the world championships in 2025 in
Stranraer
We now have more than 60 paid up members and are still getting
new members are still joining us.
The community side of the Skiff is very active including a wild water
swimming group.
We have had a Dementia group, Scouts, Forfar Tangent, Options in
life, and are about to get a Probus group coming to use the skiffs 
Before the next Rotary council meeting, we intend to put a document
in front of Rotary to look at the future ownership and responsibility for
this Skiffs. The original document was not signed.
Scottish environmental Heritage have stopped us with our original
plans for the new boat Storage shed, not allowing us to build on their
site. We have now got agreement with Angus council to extend the
area of our lease to allow us to build the new Skiff store outside the
HES site. It is presently awaiting AC action for a second set of public
consultation which is not expected to cause a problem when this is
complete.
In the meantime, the two skiffs are being kept on good waterproof
covers and being maintained appropriately.

(As you might have seen there are discussions with the council and grants have been put forward to build a new shed. This is still not completed and discussions to make this happen are still ongoing. We will inform all members as soon as we have a final outcome)

Closing Regatta & Ceilidh

SATURDAY & SUNDAY 28th & 29th September 2024

We have our closing regatta at the end of September, and we invite everyone to take part of the sailing race and/or the Ceilidh in the evening. This will be a great opportunity for members of the club to get together towards the end of the sailing calendar to blow of some steam and have a boogie.

Members and non-members are invited to the sailing regatta, when you are interested and do not have received a notice of race contact us by email and we will send you one. On this day we will have visitors from the Blue bells Enterprise sailing as we have had for many years.
If there are any skiff members that would like to sail on the day, the club has some boats that are available for the day.

Not a sailor? We would still like you to join us during the day to support us, help out in the club house or on the shore. We would like even more for you to join us in the evening when we have our buffet dinner and Ceilidh. (We are looking for donations of soup for lunch and food for the evening)

If you want to get more information about the day, evening or want to help out please contact us.

Use the ‘Closing regatta and ceilidh form’ to register for sailing, ceilidh or both.

Closing regatta & Ceilidh Form

Olympic Sailing: Point – Counter-Point

The Irish Times carried an editorial by Jonathan Liew in which he found the Olympic Games had grown to include many sports, and arguably, too many.

So Liew initiated a review, and found many negatives about Sailing, calling it to be “a continuing sop to super-rich men who founded the Games and still just really love yachts, basically inaccessible to most of the countries in the world, even the ones with a viable coastline.”

There was a lot of disagreement with his view… here’s what Sheila Armstrong had to say:
I learned to sail off the coast of Sligo in a three-metre Mirror dinghy built by my father sometime in the early 1990s. So did my siblings, my cousins, and my nieces and nephews. The boat is called Sideshow Bob, and it has been holed, capsized and repaired so many times that the Ship of Theseus could take notes. We travelled to competitions around Ireland and even made it abroad a few times in these Mirror dinghies. As adults, some of us graduated to larger boats and some drifted away, but we can all still tie a damn good knot. –
Full report

Skiff regatta

On Saturday the 24th there is a skiff regatta on Forfar Loch on the birthday of the ‘Mary Campbell’. The day will start with boats arriving from 8:30 with breakfast rolls. Tea and coffee during the day as well as some excellent cakes to keep going. There will be sandwiches for lunch time.

Racing will begin at 10:30 on the loch, where we have a 1km straight to create a 2km long race.

Our race categories are:

  • 280 mix
  • 50+women
  • open mixed
  • 60+women
  • 60+men
  • open women
  • 50+women
  • 60+mixed

Please pop in if you have time and support the skiff team.

Sailing training for beginners

We have run a cadet sailing training for beginners with great success, and we are about to begin an adult training session. The cadet sessions have been run on Sunday mornings for 6 weeks and all cadets have been successful in completing the level 1 sailing.
Soon we are about to start a 2 day course for adults, where they will be given a full day instructions on how to start with sailing, getting into boats and get hands on coaching. We have some spaces for anyone interested in giving sailing a go.
The cost of the course is £60.00 pp, plus a club membership at 50% of the cost. With the membership you can keep sailing after you have completed the course in any of the club boats. The hire price for the club boats is also removed for the rest of the year, therefore there is no reason to not practice after the course.