Captain's Report ...

Dear All

Thanks to all of you who joined me in festivities at our annual Christmas bash at the Bear in North Morton; I'm told that I had a really good time.....at least I wasn't sick in Debenhams during Christmas shopping the next day....Linda, you're a disgrace! Thank you Nikki for organising it all (again). Not much to report as we've not done much rowing recently, apart from the odd trip to the rowing lake at Eton and the Tideway, and the only significant competition has been the first round of senior trials - see the results at these two sites:

Senior Trials 1
Senior Trials 2

Thankfully, the river is now on its way down again, and the Wallingford head has been now officially rescheduled to February 18th, 2001, river conditions permitting, of course.

The new year will see a few changes of personnel at the club:

Dick Smith has kindly agreed to replace Julian as our treasurer, Rachael E. will be our new Safety Officer, and Kirsty Lyon will be the new Women's squad captain. Thanks to all those who are leaving posts, their work generally goes unrewarded by most. A special goodbye to Michelle Heydenrich who returns to South Africa in January. She took on the task of women's captain and performed it admirably through some quite tough times. Goodbye also to a couple of other émigrés, Bill Roberts who has moved to Holland, and Paul 'beaker' Blanc who has gone to 'Uni' in his home town of Melbourne, Australia. Other end of year thanks go to the raft builders, who continue to produce new and ingenious developments for boating at our events. If only it would stop raining then people could have an event and we could see what you have been up to! Thanks to work teams from the squads who spent time on boats and cleaning activities recently, and to Chris Bomford for the unenviable task of cleaning out the gutters.

Now for requests. Ali West will be stepping down as publicity officer as her new job will take her to the States for long periods at a time (lucky sod). She'll still be looking after the web site but we'll need somebody to be a contact for the mainly local news media. Interested? You may have seen a message from Matt Cooper recently asking about your help with club sponsorship. Matt is organising the distribution of our glossy new prospectuses to potential club sponsors and needs your help in establishing some contacts. A flavour of what the prospectus looks like can be experienced on this site under the sponsorship page.

Sorry if I've forgotten anything, I'll be away for a few days over Christmas: in my absence I can be contacted on my mobile. I'd be grateful if any of you pass the club, just to pop in and check that everything is OK: lights turned off, etc. Also if we get more rain, the launches may need bailing out. A Happy Christmas to you all!

Martin Parr Captain, WRC