| Newsletter September 2011 |
The Buffalo Burgee BugleOfficial Newsletter of the Buffalo River Yacht Club – September 2011Happy Spring to all our members and friends!!!! We have had a really hectic winter with some record breaking extreme weather so here is hoping for some awesome Spring days with lekker sailing winds!!! September is also the beginning of our Spring Series Racing Season. A hearty congratulations to our Racing Sub-Committee for putting together an amazing programme for Spring, Summer and Winter. Thank-you Roy, Graham, Stu and Byron. I have included in this newsletter an article from the Racing Sub-Committee explaining the ins and outs of the Racing Season. September Calendar
Please print this out and stick on your fridge or forehead!!!! Please support your club! Please forward this calendar to all your friends and colleagues!!Thank you! LETTERS TO THE EDITORLet’s start on a funny note, shall we? Remember in our first edition of the BBB (Buffalo Burgee Bugle), Graham Wentworth made his debut as the author of his monthly column, Wenties Words? Well, the following letter was received in response to his column: Dear Editor Re: In response to the fictitious account of the Race day – 21 July 2011 posted by Wilbur “Wenti” Smith. I really do not know where he gets his version of the race from, other than from the bottom of the umpteen beers that Werner had to run his feet off for in order to keep the skipper and crew of Unmatched satisfied while they were on such a quest to drown their sorrows at having been beaten over the line by the bigger superior yacht Adios, that was skippered by three sailors that were using the race as part of their Day skippers examination Practical, and crewed with novices that had never sailed together before. The race was scheduled to start at 11am, Wenti’s watch must be in need of new batteries as, or perhaps Wenti needs to learn how to tell time? After having waited for half an hour for Wenti ‘s Unmatched to arrive, the crew and skippers of the FASTer 42 footer Adios decided to start, and take their own time. This decision was allowed by the Rear Commodore of Sailing who was on board. The start line was crossed and the incredibly paced Adios tore away, leaving the slower Pacer, lagging far behind the wake left by the Superior Adios passed the transit of the Osner and turned for the downwind leg, only to notice the tiny Unmatched turn miles before the transit to start their downwind leg. The Brave crew of this little boat was prepared to do anything to close the ever lengthening gap between the boats, including taking their self claimed handicap of shortening course. With the Mighty Adios’s owners not being on board, it was decided that we would not fly a spinnaker, just in case we blew it. So when the little Unmatched put hers up, we watched her reel in a few feet on us on the downwind leg, and we watched her as she displayed her prowess with regular and spectacular broaches, each broach loosing the few feet she had fought so gallantly to gain. The Wonderful Adios then reached the grain elevator transit tacked to begin her final upwind leg, and with superior sailing and tactical skills pulled away from Wenti’s woeful crew, rounded the breakwater (Without seeing any Dolphins) and reached for the finishing line, so far ahead of the Sorry-full, aptly named “Unmatched” Pacer , causing the poor crew of the out classed boat to start hallucinating about seeing Dolphin, and dreaming about a Victory that will remain but a dream for them, as the Crew aboard the Beautiful Adios get used to sailing together, and become a formidable force, a force that might even contend with the bar mans (Werner’s) pace in trying to quench the thirst of Wenti’s crew as they proceeded to drown their sorrows. Ian Williams Where have all the flowers gone??????Oscar has hidden a bunch of flowers on our website. I challenge each and everyone of you to find the Spring bunch of flowers on our website. Incidentally, our website gets over 100 hits per month, if we all subscribed to the website (it’s free!!) and started forums and also used it for advertising etc, we would get lots more hits as we would have an active website! I also need photos for our website!!!!! A clue for you – it is hidden in a special place where you can share opinions. Sailing Season – 2011 – 2012BRYC has decided to put together a structured sailing program for the new season, as we are essentially a sailing club and racing is an integral part of sailing for the competitive members of the club and the members who do not have the boats and time to go cruising at this stage of their lives. We have worked hard in finding new crew ( and potential members ) for skippers who are short handed or need extra bodies on their boats. We have had some very promising feedback and it will be up to us, as club members, to make the new potential sailors part of the activities and feel welcome in our club. The challenges have been sent out and hopefully we can whip up a little bit of rivalry and competition between skippers and yachts, which is always good for racing and the spirit in the club. The full program is available at the club, so skippers please familiarize yourselves with all the detail. Please take the time to make a trip to the club so you can diarise dates, times and also check out your class and handicap. If anybody is unhappy with their handicap, or would also like to be eligible for a Class 2 prize, please approach Deon, who will then raise it with the racing committee. Please note, not all racing committee members can be bribed with beer, so you might need to come up with some more imaginative ideas. In short the program is as follows : Starts Sunday 11th September 2011
1st - 5 points Please, if you can assist in any way, even if it’s just pitching up on race days, it will be much appreciated. This will allow for a meaningful prize-giving event, club with a bit of a racing history - and a few trophies in a cabinet with my boat’s name on them! I have attached with this newsletter the sailing calendar – please print and keep handy and diarise the dates - Ed Roy Crossley Buffalo River Sailing School – Report by Erich Jordan
Some time ago we were contacted by Dieter Botha who lives in East London and works in Johannesburg. He and his brother, are planning to cruise in the Mediterranean with their young families next year. On the advice of Patrick Gee, whom they knew through business, they abandoned their initial plan to train in Cape Town and opted to register with the Buffalo River Sailing School instead. Unfortunately, the weather did not play along and the strong winds of Tuesday gave way to light airs and a 8.5 metre swell for much of the remaining week. We spend time working on their boat handling skills, general theory and chart work, for which both Dieter and Ryan showed a natural aptitude. It was an absolute pleasure working with both brothers and we look forward to their return early next year to complete their Day Skipper course with our school. Dieter is very keen to do some more sailing and is in East London on Friday through Monday each week. He can be reached on: 083 297 1410. Only advise I can give is to keep him away from the bow line when mooring your boat. The Buffalo River Sailing School is currently taking bookings for Competent Crew and Day Skipper Courses. Delegates need to complete their Competent Crew Course before applying to complete the Day Skipper Course. Part time and full time courses are available. Buffalo River Sailing School, PO Box 8136, Nahoon, 5210 Cell: 082 323 3362 Fax: 086 625 1880 A Blast from the PastOne balmy and sunshiny day in August, a few of the BRYC members got together one Sunday to braai and chill. Colleen, Eleanor and Cathy were obviously bored and tired of listening to the mens exaggerated and drunken sailing stories so they started going through some of the old committee files and they came upon a BCC Newsletter dated January 1988. Back in the day, the BRYC was called the Buffalo Cruising Club! Their logo was pretty much the same as ours is today. The Commodore at that time was Hans Behrendsen, the V C was the late and great, Arthur Middleton and the Secretary was Barbie Lightbody. The newsletter was filled with anecdotes, adverts and reports. New members who joined the BCC during the month of December 1987 included the late Peter Jakobi. He was a member of our yacht club for a whopping 23 years! We miss your smile Pete. I could determine from this newsletter that the club was started in the July of 1986. We now have a birthday month and another party to schedule for next year!!!! The joining fee back then was a whopping R25.00. Inflation has certainly taken its toll. There was a regular column submitted by Liz Swanepoel called ‘The Galley Nook’ and it featured a Lentil casserole with Sausage recipe as well as an eggless cake recipe! If Stu wrote this column it would have to be the legless cake recipe! Ha ha!! There is a lovely story submitted by Ted Faram called ‘The Beachcomber Story’. It is about getting yacht Uxolo ready for her sail to Mauritius so she could participate in a race back from there. Steve du Toit and Ted were to deliver her to Mauritius and for the big race back they were to be joined by Arthur Middleton, Ben Wienk and Ted Lawrence. Unfortunately the weather did not play along and after leaving on the 30th of August 1987 they returned to East London on the 12th of September 1987. This is a lovely story, well written and it will be included in one of our future BBB’s. On the 14th of Febuary 1988 a Ladies race was scheduled and the prize was, wait for it, a lampshade!!!! We are tring to find out who the lucky girl is that received this magnificent prize!!! (Note to Commodore from the Ed: I hope a lampshade is not on your prize inventory for ladies races?) I am including in this newsletter the Sailing News for January 1988. I thought this would be quite appropriate as we are on the verge of starting our racing season, so, here goes: The first race which opened the BCC’s 1987/88 Racing Calendar was held on Saturday the 24th of October. The race was a staggered start event and was held in excellent conditions – 10 to 15 knots of wind to begin and blowing up to 20 knots for the finishing boats. ‘Jemima’ started first at 1400h with ‘Uxolo’ bringing up the rear at 1429h. Yachts ‘Arwen’, ‘Melody’, ‘Ocean Spray’ and ‘Guinevere’ all had trouble starting on time – ‘Rhythm’ not only started on time but also won the bottle of bubbly. Judging by the turn out at the Club after the race, and the comments for the various skippers and crew, the event was a great success. Tony’s Boat Inn Gonubie Challenge – 5 December 1987The race was held in moderate SW wind conditions, a flat sea and the fleet experienced a current setting West, approx. 2 miles offshore. There were only BCC yachts competing, the challenge to the ELYC was not accepted. Seven yachts started on time with twotugs and a pilot boat breathing down their sterns preparing a tanker for sea. The run to Gonubie was great with all the yachts going well (and looking great). The mark was well laid and Archie Gray, who has more miles in a yacht behind him than he can remember, stood by throughout the race in his ski boat which also acted as a rescue boat. Thank you Archie. The beat back was enjoyable. Dr David Smith offered the club the Royal Cape Yacht Club handicapping system – the results proved that David’s performance times are excellent. Tony’s Boat Inn Gonubie Challenge Results
Well sailed chaps! We all know where things went wrong and we all expect a great sail next time. Wenties WordsA monthly column written by Graham Wentworth It’s been a long cold winter, Vikings. Even the frost bitten Cormorants are battling to take off by lunch time. There has been very little sailing done except for Shorty piece and Eric the half bee and his sailing school. Well done chaps. Your parrots and peg legs will be in the post. We have had 2 visitors from afar grace our verandah. First Greg the Scanadian, 62yrs in the shade, single handed with cat but no parrot on shoulder. He did Brazil to EL in 58 days. He got knocked down off Augulhas, took a bath and decided that EL was a good place to stop as the gale was blowing this way. He has spent 6 weeks on the hard cutting and welding new steel plates onto the hull of his boat. What a man. Does all the work himself. Shame to the Verandah Vikings. It’s high time you put you boat between your legs, stop the war stories and go sailing. Otherwise R600 .00 fine! We thought that Greg was pretty knarly , then along comes Adrian Foie Gras . St Marten to EL in 76 days. On his ace, 27yrs old, and steps ashore dressed in something that resembled a clown uniform. What’s wrong with the man? When I was his age, I went sailing to look rugged and to cruise chicks. The boat that he was sailing, 40ft aluminum, belonged to his old man. Imagine taking your old mans boat , phoning him 76 days later saying “I ran into some waves off Africa , Dad , the solar panels, dog house, sails are not well or not there anymore . Don’t worry Dad, I have met these nice chaps Skeet, Asterisk and Sterance. Strange chaps but they said that Africa is not for sissies and they would put the boat back together in no time at all. No sweat bru! Four weeks later we sent him on his way. His English had improved and he could express himself in some of our homegrown sayings. We were left confused and still couldn’t come to grips with the clown uniform and his addiction to Foie Gras. See you in the deep, deep sea. Sponsored FridaysApparently this was a regular event at the club and we are trying to revive this idea as it is such a good fundraiser for us. How it works is that someone sponsors snacks for the evening and then each member pays R20 and this goes into our fundraising coffers. We will start by hosting this event once a month (see the calendar) and try and engage enough interest to start doing it more regularly. Our first sponsored evening will take place on the 16th of September. Please diarise this date. We obviously need a sponsor so if you are keen to be our first generous contributor, please contact me to finalise the details. Corporate Sponsored Evenings.This is an opportunity for businesses to sponsor a meal on a Wednesday or Friday evening and in return for their sponsorship we will allow them to brand the venue for the evening as well as distribute promotional material and also present their product or service in the form of a presentation or something similar. We will also provide the corporate with our membership database. Should you know of a company that would like to take advantage of this opportunity, please ask them to contact me on This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it The Story of ShayisaSome of our members may remember Carl and his motley crew when they docked in East London a while ago to wait out some bad weather on their way to CT. Yours truly had a few drinks and also spent a little time with them all whilst they were here. Carl recently got in touch with me to share the story of their voyage to CT from EL. Carl Bosma is the owner of Shayisa, a 42’ketch rigged Barens Sea Trader. She has been in his family since she was commissioned and launched in 1981. She has spent her life in Durban but hasn’t seen much sailing lately and Carl thought it a good idea to buy her from his uncle, move her to Cape Town thereby keeping her in the family and also getting her out on the water, where she deserves to be. Obviously the sail from Durban to Cape Town needs to be taken seriously so Carl set about readying her for the deep blue sea. I will let Carl tell you in his own words the story from here:.... Shayisa was slipped, antifouled, engine serviced, new filters, fuel changed, water tanks emptied, cleaned and re-filled. We got new sheets, the sails got new battens, new sliders, new stack pack. Everything was checked. Before the trip we had her upgraded from Category C to to B including hull and rigging inspections. One item that the inspector noted was that the rigging screws were the old “bottle” type which had been there for about 15 years and suggested that these should be changed as they collect water which over time could corrode the thread. We changed the lot. We stopped en-route to Cape Town at East London while we waited for a weather window and after a few days took a gap that we thought would get us to PE, if not Mossel Bay. It was the end of a front and we departed while the sea was still a bit lumpy and the wind was staring to change in our favour. We’d been at sea for about 12 hours, it was 10 o clock at night, the wind was blowing about 20 knots and the swell was 3 – 4 meters. We were motoring along at about 4-5 knots, and probably about 50 miles from East London when it all went wrong. And it happened fast. There was a strange vibration and within seconds we main mast came crashing down on deck. The reason for it was that we lost our lower shrouds. There were two people on watch and we were incredibly lucky – no-one got hurt and the majority of the impact was taken by one of the deck winches. We lashed the mast onto the deck, cleared any of the halyards and other lines/rigging which might foul the prop and took stock of the situation. The mast was lying across the deck in a large “v”, almost like 3-4 meter outriggers on either side. We decided that rather than take the risk of trying to turn around at night when we couldn’t see properly and fully assess the situation, we would continue till daylight and make a judgement call then. By the time morning came, we decided that we were so far into the trip that we might as well carry on to the next port – PE. Which we did. In total it took about 48 hours from East London to PE. The long and the short of the story is this: you can never be over-prepared. We did as much preparation as we possibly could and still had a major incident. We had filled up with fuel in East London without which we would have been in serious trouble and I was very grateful for all the engine work that had been done in Durban. We had enough water, a satphone, food, and all the safety equipment which might have been necessary if anything else had happened. Once we were there, we craned the mast ashore and contacted the insurance company. I’m busy making plans to finish the last part of the trip. Carl Bosma   
October Month is PHOTO MonthI have got the East London Photographic Society to agree to make SAILING their photo theme for their monthtly competition!!!!! I need yacht owners / skippers to submit their names asap if they would be prepared to host a couple of photographers on race days, fun sails and sunrise and sunset sails. This will afford them the opportunity to take some great action shots as well as some amazing pics using the rising or fading sun as their light. They are prepared to sign indemnity forms. I attended their last meeting and briefed them on what to expect during a race and they are all super excited and keen to be a part of the action. Many of them were already discussing how to waterproof their cameras!! Those of you who are keen to host one or two of their members, please email your confirmation to me asap. This will culminate in an exhibition at the BRYC where the media and all members of the BRYC and ELYC will be invited to view the photos. I am sure we will also be able to arrange some of the winning photos for our clubhouse and I am sure as yacht owners you would love some great pics of your babies?! Let us be the perfect hosts and make them all feel very welcome. I am arranging indemnity forms. Remember this is happening in OCTOBER.Commodores ReportOur sailing season is about to open, please bring your friends down and enjoy the great breakfasts! Booking essential with Eleanor on 082 341 5865. Also, don’t forget the social braais after the sail. We will be revamping the bar area in the near future, members will be kept up to speed on any disruptions that may be caused. Congrats to Tanya on another great newsletter. Gary Midlane ClassifiedsColourful bunting available at R15.oo per meter. Great bird deterrent! Available in your boat colours. Custom made to your requirements. Also a great way to dress your boat and make our little yacht harbour look colourful. Contact the Editor for more info. Editors ExitTo all our members, a famous quote springs to mind as I compile this newsletter, `A chain is only as strong as its weakest link’. Without you, our members, we cannot achieve the incredible goals we hope to achieve. Together we can create an amazing Club and an outstanding venue. Our committee only exists of 6 members, we desperately need you on board to make things happen. I sincerely hope I have privilege of meeting all our members in person. Come on, join us and let’s make the BRYC the most sought after Club and venue in East London. See you on the water! Tanya Schenk - Editor Rear Commodore: Social Buffalo River Yacht Club Cell – 072 095 1559 Email – This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it |
Thank you for welcoming our Sailing School news into your club news letter. I am happy to report that our first fulltime Competent Crew course was completed this month.