Annual General Meeting
Don’t forget it is our Annual General Meeting this Monday evening,19th February at Scawby Village Hall. The meeting is in the Garden Room and starts at 6:30pm. Refreshments are provided by Jean.
We will be electing those Management Committee and Sub Group representatives positions that are up for re-election, and discussing any motions raised by the committee or by members.
I believe we have not had any nominations for the Management Committee position for Trips, nor for Sub Group reps for slalom or paddle-ability. You can be nominated for these vacant position at the meeting.
Trips Officer
The Trips officer need not be a paddler, just good at organising! (you will get help from coaches with regards venues and paddler suitability etc). This is committee position so you will be involved in all aspects of running the club.
Slalom Rep
This position is under our Disciplines Officer, (currently Graham Simpkin). Again, you do not have to be a paddler, your role here is again mainly organisational, (though a son/daughter interested in slalom helps!)
Paddle-ability Rep
We haven’t filled this position for several years now, but with our increased focus on EDI (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion) it is an important role we really need someone to take up. Once again, you do not have to be a paddler but just be good at organising. A keen interest in EDI would be beneficial. One task is to help move forward our better disabled access plans. We also need to look at getting more disable and disadvantaged people paddling. We already have some provision for marathon boats, and our Discipline Officer has attended a course on disabled racing, so will be able to assist in this. This role comes under the Welfare Officer (currently Kelly Heath-Sargent.
February and March Pool Sessions
These sessions are fully booked, but we nerly always get last-minute cancellations. These are always posted on our Facebook page first (FriendsofGSCC) as it is quicker to do from a mobile device. We try to put them on the website and email them too, but that is not always possible as our Publicity Officer is often paddling on Saturday afternoon!
Boathouse Upgrade
Last month several volunteers, including parents, began the first phase of the Boathouse Upgrade project by having a general tidy-up and clear-out of unused kit and junk! We also moved over the main boat rack nearer to the building columns to make room for better racking.
Then Graham, Sue and Martin built new racking to enable us to store all the marathon boats in one place. We can now store 25 k1’s in the end of the aisle on a new timber rack:
and we have re-space the racks along the north wall so we can now store the Polly Pippens (super stable racing boats) and the Wavehopper (whitewater racing boats) with the marathon boats. These are shown below next to the yellow junior Ligthning boats (on racks that have been re-spaced to make it easier to access them).
We now have space for 5 more boats. an we will tweak what goes where as we get used to using the new layout. All this work means easier access to all our racing boats and we no longer have to store some of the boats on the trailer.
The next phase is to improve the changing rooms and the access paths to and from the jetty and leisure centre. (these were two of the outcomes from our consultation).
Marathon
Brigg Hasler Marathon
We hope you are all looking forward to our first regional marathon of the season at Brigg on 24th March. We potentially have 27 club paddlers so Graham may need to make some executive decisions about who gets to use a particular boat and may call on some of the squad to do K2. Watch this space!
Upcoming races
Some of our better paddlers need to gain experience in larger more competitive fields and also to experience different waters. Graham has put a number of out-of-region events on the club calendar which we could possibly go to. The first is Royal Lemington Spa on March 10th. Please contact Graham if you are interested.
Our boat Stock
Graham has produced a list of all our available “marathon” boats with information about their suitability. Lightnings are clearly for junior paddlers and some of the others are only suitable for beginners and lower divisions. You can view it at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dhfrJDVCq91FwcV1ON4bIoyVPl0pYvbp/view?usp=drive_link