“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
Ferris Bueller, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
The frantic pace of racing most weekends through Spring and Summer makes way for a more relaxed time around the Club as Autumn leads into Winter. In our last members’ survey, most suggested the best thing to do at the Amateurs was simply to hang around on the deck, before and after sailing. Chat to a few friends, do a bit of boat work and watch the day go by. There is a wonderful peace in our hidden space of Mosman Bay, where the quality of time forms an antidote to the pace of life outside.
However, not all is as it seems in our idyll! To the outsider the staff and volunteers appear like ducks whose calm exterior gliding along the waterway belies the furious paddling required to keep it all going. At one time or another most members have volunteered for a working bee, or on the start boat, Gaffers Day or tending the garden. Some, such as the Archives Committee, take it upon themselves to create and manage new resources which generations to come will appreciate. Still others keep our busy boats running and replace the rotten posts and beams and make sure we are all relatively safe.
Just as important to the future of the Club is the membership committee who ensure that new members experience the best of what we know the Club can offer. Listening to discussions on the newly formed Website Committee I had a sense of how much the Club has changed in the last twenty years to keep pace with the world. There is no doubt there are more changes in store, yet I marvel at how successfully the living spirit of the Club has been preserved. Members are keen to try new things to make it their own place, the Water Women organised a Nautical Trivia Night — great fun including bouts of spontaneous shanty singing. Some members have an interest in restoring old club traditions, such as the picnic races, which were regular family and social sailing events from 100 years ago.
Speaking of traditions, many club members attended the recent relaunching of the beautifully restored gaff topsail yacht Athene at the Noakes yard. Athene from its launch in 1905 raced at the Amateurs, the RSYS and RPAYC and here she was again reborn and ready to race almost 120 years later. The restoration was a labour of love for Sean Langman and the whole Noakes team, who can be justly proud of the job. The yacht was then generously gifted to John Diacopoulos for his years of support to Noakes and the Classic yachts of the harbour.
In recent news there is another significant gift to sailing being discussed —“The America’s Cup” — which was conceived over 150 years ago signals from the commodore 5 and gifted by the owners’ syndicate of the yacht America. The Cup June 2024 forms the basis of the evolutionary match racing event that will be raced for the 37th time in October this year in Barcelona. Whether the development of the boats has taken them beyond pure sailing into other sports such as cycling or gliding is up for debate. What is so fascinating though is that these highly-engineered machines are being sailed at speeds up to 50 knots and controlled by human power.
I wonder what Ben Lexcen would have thought of the AC75s and how much the design of his “winged keel” may have led to the flying boats in Barcelona?
Peter Scott
Commodore A
Athene gleaming in the afternoon sun at Noakes on 17 May
Photo: John Jeremy
The Commodore has been dreaming again — perhaps foiling Rangers could follow the lead of modern America’s Cup yachts. They might be hard to handicap, however
