East Midlands Section Autumn Meeting.
The East Midlands Section’s first event of this winter season is on Saturday November 19th 2016 at Sharnford Village Hall (LE10 3PP) from 10:00 for coffee and a 10:30 start until 16:30, with lunch at the Countryman Pub just across the Road. There will be a charge of £4 to cover the hall and coffee and tea. The Countryman serves good value pub food.
Our speaker is David Mark who is talking about Globetrotting by Charter. I know his talk has been much enjoyed by other sections and includes lots of useful information. David is speaking to us after lunch.
In the morning we want to try something a little different from previous years. I am always aware of how much I learn at CA meetings chatting to fellow members over lunch or at the bar. There is a wealth of experience in our group, so we want to try and arrange small discussion groups on a range of cruising topics. We think there will be time to get involved in at least three groups on different topics.
The ideas that have been suggested so far include the following:
Cruising Areas.
As a winter group based in the middle of the country we have a wide range of cruising grounds both in the UK and abroad, so let’s chat about where we sail, why it’s so good, the best anchorages, restaurants and pubs, and all the bits of local knowledge that make cruising life easy.
Navigation and Communication.
What electronic charts do we all use and do we use a tablet, laptop, or chart plotter to display them. Do we always carry paper charts and how do use them to back up the digital ones? How do we keep our charts updated; do we have experience of swapping, borrowing or buying second hand?
Do we use SSB, Iridium, Vhf, Epirbs, Plbs.
Food on Board
Favourite recipes, galley equipment, tips for storage, provisioning, coping with bad weather.
Sails
Andy and Sara (Limbara) are experts on sail repairs and canvas work and have volunteered to bring their Sailrite sewing machine along, so as well as discussing how we look after our sails and ideas for bespoke canvas work, we can get a bit of practical experience. If anyone has some smallish canvas repairs, that you would like to bring with you, let me know in your email reply and I’ll see what we can do to help.
Other ideas for discussion
We would be happy to receive other suggestions so if there is something you want to discuss then let me know.
We will have a leader for each topic and hope that we can email a summary of the useful information that comes out of the informal discussions.
Photographs
We would like members to send their favourite picture of their boat or friends and family sailing. We will put them all in a slide show on the day and with your permission use them in the future on our Sections page on the website and in the Cruising magazine.
Please attach one jpeg to your reply if you can. Even if you can’t make it on the 19th you can still email me a picture.
We would like to know numbers as soon as possible so please reply to this email asap if you would like to attend.
We will send out the menu later as we will need to pre-order lunch.
We are looking forward to seeing old and new friends to hear about your summer cruising.
Ted Wilson and Tony Montgomery Smith
Joint Section Secretaries