Captain’s Blog June 2017

Well winter has struck with a vengeance with the early mornings being a bit brisk and very dark.

A reminder to anyone venturing out at this time of year, please ensure that you have adequate clothing to keep you warm while rowing and your lights are in good working order. We want to ensure that you arrive back at the pontoon in the same state you push off from it, only a little more tired.

Strategic Plan

A sub committee of Kathleen Hextell, John Sheldrick and Geoff Green have been working on the Strategic Plan for some time now, resulting in copies of the draft plan being displayed in the rowers gym. Comments have been collated, considered and applied to the plan as appropriate.

As a result the Strategic Plan has now been ratified by the full committee and is in place. We need to now start on actioning the plan and will be communicating more about this in the near future.

Revolutionise Website

Just a reminder to check out our club management website at: https://client.revolutionise.com.au/drc/news/overview/

We are moving a lot of the functionality such as boat bookings and incident reporting to the site. It also has the ability to create training sessions and events. We are looking at moving our general website to this platform over the next few months. Anyone who has gone looking for the old one will see that it no longer exists so we will expedite the creation of the new one.

AGM

The 2017 AGM is scheduled for Saturday 26^th August at 3pm. An official advice will be released soon in line with our requirements under the constitution. We will follow the AGM with drinks and finger food upstairs in Aqua Luna. The AGM is an important event where we elect the committee and office holders for the forthcoming year so we like to see as many of our members as possible attending, hence the early notice.

Centenary Committee

The Centenary Committee has been meeting regularly and is well underway with plans for our centenary in 2019.

The next major event is a Return To DRC bbq at the club on October 22. More information will be communicated closer to the event.

The committee headed by Alex Warner, and consists of Graham Wearne,, Diedre Edmunds, Peter Stroud, Louis Petrin and Kathleen Hextell is doing a fantastic job and we look forward to making the most of this significant date in the history of our club.

Working Bee

The next working bee is on Saturday June 17 starting at 8am.

We will once again be working on the surrounds of the club and tidying the boat shed and gym.

As well as this we will attach the remaining oar brackets on the rolling racks so that we can free up some space for out new oar sets in the existing racking. This will mean that all private owners who have a scull on the racks will need to store their oars with their boat.

We will also be demonstrating some basic skills to identifying equipment that needs maintenance on it. Things such as identifying worn out wheels and slides and how to replace them will be demonstrated.

These working bees are super important to ensuring that our boathouse, gym and surrounds are in the best condition to support our use of them.

On Water Safety

As mentioned in the introduction, your safety and the safety of others is a priority. Please ensure that you follow the Bay Usage plan which shows the direction to be travelled in areas of the bay. Please take care when rowing in groups that you do not spread out too wide across the bay. We have had some collisions and near misses over the last month so it is worth a reminder.

Equipment Maintenance

As expected, as we get to the end of the season, we need to give all the boats a maintenance once over. We are looking to schedule in a rigging workshop before the end of July to go over basic rigging principles and set-up. In the meantime, we will look to have a short session at the working bee, focussing on identifying equipment that needs repair. We have an extensive spare parts stock so that most issues can be fixed with ease. If you have a maintenance issue with a boat that you are unable to fix, please log on the Revolutionise website.

Just a reminder that our boats are set up with a standard rigging/gearing for the size of the boat and intended users. Please do not adjust the rigging, other than gate heights and foot stretcher positions without prior consent of the Captain.

Head Of The Yarra

A meeting was held recently for those interested in doing the Head Of The Yarra. The intention is for the club to boat the Mixed crew, 2 Men’s crew and a women’s crew.

I am hopeful of getting the men’s and women’s crews on the water at the end of next week. The Monty 8+ is out of action so we will need to rig the Lee 8+.

I will release a program soon for both on water and erg sessions.

Scullers Sessions on Tuesday and Saturday

For those who cannot get enough rowing, we are running a coached sculling session on Tuesday morning at 5am and a long row on Saturday mornings at 5.45am.

The focus on Tuesdays is technique, while the Saturday sessions are about preparing for the head races from August onward.

Racking Fees

For those of you lucky enough to have a private boat in the club, we have realised that no racking fees have been sent out for the current year. This is a spoiler warning that you will receive your fee for the last year in the next week or so.

Tara and PLC

The schools are now well into their winter programs so we can expect more activity on the pontoon over the next few months.

Over the school holidays there will be some mini rowing camps operating out of the club. Most of this activity should be after the high load times before 8am.

I look forward to seeing you at the Working Bee and out on the water.

Thanks

Rob Glendenning

Club Captain