Help Southwold Sailing Club in Aviva Community Fund bid
by Toby Morton 27 Oct 2017 08:22 BST
27 October 2017
Sailing at Southwold Sailing Club © Ollie Boyes
Southwold Sailing Club's continued success has helped make it to the second of three rounds in the Aviva Community Fund with a bid of £8000 to purchase three Wayfarer dinghies. All that's needed now are lots of votes to make it to the third round where our project will be judged by a panel.
The club, located in picturesque Southwold, applied for the fund in an effort to create easy access to the sport of sailing for the less agile and older age groups, whether it be previous injuries, disability or anything that limits mobility. Wayfarers are stable sailing dinghies which provide a comfortable seated position in which the dinghy can be sailed from.
Please help the club to make it through to the next round by voting for our project:
- Go to www.avivacommunityfund.co.uk
- Register with Facebook or set up an Aviva account
- Vote for 'Community Sailing for all ages'
- Come along to Southwold Sailing Club and get ready for sailing 2018!
SSC became an affiliated RYA training centre four years ago, offering free learn to sail courses for members. Sailing activities have been revived within the club thanks to all of the volunteer instructors and helpers. Over this time period many people have taken to the water, ranging from youngsters to families and adults.
The club Commodore Ollie Boyes expressed his frustration which led to the bid, "Over the last few years our training programme has been very successful in getting many people on the water in our fleet of Laser Picos, however these dinghies are for the more flexible and mobile sailors, due to their small size and unstable nature. Unfortunately as a result of this we feel very sad that many prospective sailors are put off by the agility and mobility required to sail them. There are also many retired sailors and retired members of our community who express interest but feel they are too old for sailing these modern boats. Families also express they would like to sail more stable dinghies as a group in a more sturdy comfortable dinghy such as a Wayfarer. So we have identified that three Wayfarers could be the way to get these groups of people on the water comfortably and safely, giving them the experience of sailing. By providing more stable and comfortable dinghies we know we could get these people enjoying the sport we love."
Sailing at Southwold has the benefits of sailing at sea or on the beautiful picturesque river Blyth with regular river cruises to the Blythburgh White Hart for lunch. If the club were successful in gaining funds not only will it help our learn to sail programme, river cruises will be of a regular occurrence.
Your vote could make a huge difference to SSC and to the members of our community. Southwold Sailing club welcomes all members of the community.
For more information on learning to sail go to www.southwoldsc.org