RTYC Racers' Dinner — 24 February '09

This is an opportunity to celebrate the successes on the water of 2008 and look forward to the events in 2009.

 

Racers' Dinner 24th February

The Club’s annual Team Racers’ Dinner this year metamorphoses into the Racers’ Dinner, bring into the fold – and along to one of the best informal dinners of the Clubhouse year – all members involved in the Club’s wide an extensive racing programme. Team Racers, fleet racers, race officers, umpires and judges: we should all be getting together to tell each other how to do it better.

 

First and foremost the dinner is a chance for those who raced for the Club in 2008 to relive old dreams and recite old glories. Royal Thames team travel isn’t just about the sailing and it is not always necessary that what happens in Jackson stays in Jackson. Sometimes what happened in Jackson can win a prize in Knightsbridge. For whom will you vote in this year’s Prang of the Year Award?

 

No less important is the chance to look forward to the coming season. In 2009 (go here for the full programme) we will send teams to Boston, New York, Norfolk and Wirral (eh?) and we shall host matches with some of our European reciprocal clubs. Do you want to get involved? In the programme we have events for all levels of skill in the Club: Bronze, Silver and Gold.

 

We now have at our disposal a matched pair of Hunter 707s, based in Cowes, available for team and for match race practice, and for informal match racing. Do you want to know more?

 

We have to defend our Royal Thames win in the inter-Club competition of this year’s Round the Island race – would you like to be involved?

 

The Royal Lymington is this year planning an inter-club IRC tournament, in Christchurch Bay, in June. Should we take part? We shall need a team of three IRC-rated yachts.

 

This year we shall extend our hugely successful Farr 45 series, with four regattas including another match racing tournament for the Royal Thames Imperial Trophy, in July. Would you be interested in being a race official or an umpire? Do you have a RIB that could operate as support or umpire boat?

 

The Club will again be one of the three Clubs to operate the first three days of Cowes Week, while our fast workboat Thames Five will be on duty throughout the Week, laying and recovering marks, progress spotting and acting as a standby safety boat. Would you like to get involved?

 

Thames Five operates throughout the season, at our own events and sometimes with other Clubs. Why not join the corps of members now qualified to skipper Thames Five, or the pool of those who just like to be aboard indulging in some hugely rewarding applied practical seamanship – some of it at 30 knots!

 

Would you like to be part of the inner camaraderie that binds the special group of members who run our racing, from (fairly) relaxed weekends ashore at Cowes running the weekend’s keelboat races to the (rather-less-relaxed) demands of a full-on match or team racing tournament?

 

Can you race a Scow?

 

To learn – or better still provide – the answers to these and many other racing-related questions, come to the Racers’ Dinner in the Clubhouse on Tuesday 24th February, 7.30 for 8pm, Reefers or lounge suits. £35 per person.  The menu is here.

email sailsec@royalthames.com to book your place now.