100 YEARS IN THE MAKING

Yachts belonging to the HISC preparing to race. Image: David Peter Robinson/Shutterstock

Yacht racing has now been with us for a very long time, but the sport of racing in small boats is a more recent development that is scarcely more than 100-years-old. At the same time that the boats have developed from the heavy, clinker built race versions of local fi shing boats and tenders, so the sailing clubs that support the activity have blossomed, not only around our coasts but inland as well on the rivers and reservoirs that see so much of our sailing today.

The story of how these sailing clubs came into being is a fascinating journey that encompasses not only technical changes, but the rapid advances in our social development as leisure time became an ever bigger part of our lives. Some clubs have remained small, supporting the interests of a local community, whilst others have grown and then grown again to be the high profi le mainstays of our sport.

Scattered around our shores are a few super-clubs, whose names are often in the media as they host the major domestic and international events, with the biggest and perhaps notable of these being Hayling Island Sailing Club, which is located on the western entrance to Chichester Harbour.

Centenary celebrations The area is known as Sandy Point, which is aptly named, for the club occupies a stunning location on a sandy peninsular that gives the sailors access to the wonderfully sheltered waters of Chichester Harbour or the more open expanse of Bracklesham Bay.

There is probably more sailing history generated from that small sandy spit than from anywhere else in the UK (the Hamble, which might also fancy similar claims, is just a bit more dispersed) and now, as Hayling Island Sailing Club celebrate their centenary, that story has been told in a superbly detailed new book that the club has produced in-house.

The prime mover behind the book is historian Belinda Cook, who spent several years researching the early years of Sandy Point and how the changing requirements of small boat sailing would change the nature of the club, but at the same time, how Hayling Island would exert its own infl uences on the increasing popularity of sailing in the UK.

Looking back One of the biggest problems for any sailing historian has to be that 100 years ago, pictures out afl oat and of boating in general were far less common than they

The prime mover behind the book is historian Belinda Cook, who spent several years researching the early years

are today, but in this respect Belinda and Léonie Austin have excelled themselves, as the book is full of thoughtfully placed photographs, with each of these adding to the value of the accompanying text.

This makes Hayling Island Sailing Club – 100 Years in the Making such an important piece of work as it tells, in glorious detail, just how small boat sailing made that move from something of a fringe activity to become such a central part of our sporting heritage. Even as the book was published, Team GB sailors were gearing up for the Olympic Regatta in Tokyo, but on reading this book, it will be clear to the reader that the success the UK has enjoyed at this level has many of its roots at Hayling Island - a small but important part of that 100 years that are so clearly recounted.

Congratulations to all at Hayling Island Sailing Club on this impressive work and here is to the next 100 years! Words: David Henshall