September 2023

Hello and welcome to the 2023-24 season of the Port Lincoln Yacht Club.

If you are a returning member, welcome back and if you are a new member, then thankyou for joining our club.

This year will see a slightly different format to the start of the season with the first two weeks of racing before the official open day, this is purely due to a conflict of dates for our upstairs function centre for our open day dinner. Sailing kicks off on the 14^th of October with open day following 2 weeks later on the 28^th of October so now is a good time to start dusting off the boat and drag your sailing gear out of winter storage and start getting organised for the new year.

Last season saw a variety of challenging sailing conditions but on the whole it was a good season. The financial position of the club currently looks quite good all things considered, this has been bolstered by a hugely successful Lincoln Week Regatta which saw the inclusion of the Australian Sailing Championships which saw a huge number of boats in both the Teakle Classic Adelaide to Lincoln and Lincoln Week regatta. Along side this, a couple of other events that have netted us some good money. Bookings for our function centre seem to be steadily rising which is great to see, however on the flip side we have some large expenditure items looming, namely being the need for us to install a greasy water arrestor which is in the realms of $25k and will be installed very soon. This was not our choice, it has become a legal requirement for us to have.

There are some exiting things happening within the club which sees the inclusion of the Sportsboat National Titles as part of the Lincoln Week regatta which should bring a good number of boats to compete for a National title, amongst these we will see a number of PLYC boats as this seems to be  a growing and popular club class.

You may also be aware of the club hosting the 2025-26 Sharpie class national titles, this will be an enormous event for our club with the goal of 100 boats being the target. The SA Sharpie Association are really keen to see this as a big event and initial plans are already in motion. Our ability to continually attract large high profile events is a credit to our club and the key members who drive such events. These events are not only big for us but for Port Lincoln itself, injecting many thousands of dollars into the local community. Of this we should be proud.

As the new commodore of the club I have a vision of encouraging new members and increasing the involvement of all members in club events along with weekly sailing and socialising. I encourage all of you to support club events and help us keep the club a vibrant and enjoyable place to be.

The finishing touches are being put to the sailing program and should be available very soon for you to put some dates into your no doubt full calendars.

There is a lot goes on behind the scenes to keep our club afloat and functioning and everyone is busy with everyday life so please bear with us as rest assured, myself and all of the committee members are doing all we can to keep the doors open, boats on the water and facilitate racing each week. This season will again see us use a roster system for both on water duties and canteen duties as it is unreasonable to expect the same people to fill these roles week in, week out. Should anyone be able to give a few hours of their time it would be greatly appreciated and we would love to hear from you. Volunteer help is of utmost importance to the viability of the club.

I wish everyone a safe and happy season on whatever it is you have chosen to sail and look forward to seeing you on the water and down at the club and remember our club motto “To Foster a Love of the Sea”

Hayden McFarlane

Commodore PLYC