Fun, Food and Sailing Trophies

Post date: Mar 1, 2016 9:34:20 AM

The start of our sailing season was celebrated in style on last week as the club moved from Embsay into Skipton for our Annual Awards Presentation and Social Evening. The event was held at The Three Links Club in Oddfellows Hall whose wonderful hospitality made for a relaxed and enjoyable evening.

As well as local members from Embsay and Skipton, we had a strong turn out from those who lived further away in Bradford, Keighley, Gargrave, Otley, Ilkey and other corners of the Yorkshire Dales for what turned out to be an enjoyable night.

Our MC for the night, Vince, ensured the event ran smoothly. The night started in the bar for a relaxed, informal awards presentation with the tone set from the start with the commodore (with the aid of the club secretary) presenting the awards wearing matching??? bright blue jacket and ‘orange hi-vis’ trousers.

The first awards of the night – the Commodores Cup (most improved sailor) and the Stringer Cup (1st Youth Sailor) both went to Matt Alred. Matt has been sailing his Topper at Embsay Reservoir for the last two years and has shown steady improvement throughout this time. His time with the YHYSA and Topper North Zone has obviously paid off although there must still be room for improvement as he also received the special ‘Caps Eyes’ award.

These awards were swiftly followed up by the Sportsmanship Trophy which was presented to Matthews’ parents, Colin and Cathy. The Sportsmanship trophy is a non-sailing trophy given at the discretion of the club for activities carried out to the benefit of the club. Both Colin and Cathy have been the face of the club on shore whilst other members have been enjoying themselves on the water. They have also been working on publicising the club through the website and social media.

Barrie ‘where’s the primer’ Jones was this year’s recipient of the Bonfire and Veterans Trophies whilst Al Cass received the Summer Trophy as well as Technical Camper Award the award, for unwittingly demonstrating how a flysheet can be used as a spinnaker whilst erecting a tent, at the clubs Ullswater weenend away.

A number of sailors were not present to collect their awards on the night. However the last six trophies did not take long to present as they were all went to Mike Dawson despite him switching boats between his Laser and an RS300 throughout the year. A special ‘Survival Award’ was also presented to Howard Webb for his antics in the water who should have known better and remained safely in his Laser.

Following the presentation of the awards, a fabulous buffet was enjoyed and thanks once again must go out to our hosts at the Three Links Club for all their hard work in organising the food. The social side of the night continued on during the food with table quiz which had something for all including a picture round, countdown-esque words round and a flag decoding exercise. This was a particularly disappointing finish to the night for ‘The Management’ who finished 3rd – I am reliably informed that this was deliberate on their part as they didn’t want any accusations of cheating to be made!

The evening was made complete with the raffle being drawn which had enough prizes to rival Santa’s sack – most of which seemed to go to our lovely volunteers in the kitchen.

Full details of prize winners can be found in the membership book along with the dates for this years race series and trophy days.

Club Champion
Youth Sailor Award