December 2007 Celebrating 50 Years of OK Dinghy Sailing
ALL OK
The News of the UK International OK Dinghy Class Association
Chairman’s Report 2007 by Mike Edwards Well another year draws to a close and what a year it has been! The OK dinghy reached its 50th year and I am happy to say it is still going strong. Surely this is due to the fact that it is such a great boat and has always enjoyed a loyal following. We celebrated the anniversary at Upper Thames SC in June, with many infamous OK sailors, supporters and trolley dollies coming together. There was some great racing, a sit down hog roast dinner, dancing, stories, songs and all washed down with plenty of booze. In true OK tradition the bar ran out of beer! We also managed to raise £1200 for sail4cancer, which is incredible! We were concerned before the event that all comers had to negotiate the railway crossing. Thankfully Rodney Thorne dressed himself from head to toe in a fluorescent orange outfit, which he happened to find in his car along with some gardening shears that he used to cut down most of the foliage along the track in the vicinity of the club, to improve people’s chances of spotting a train. Rodney you’re a hero! Jonty Sherwill who challenged at the very top for many years, was one of the names from the past to join the fun. Jonty has kindly put pen to paper to produce an excellent article for this newsletter, so keep reading. He makes some excellent observations and is clearly still passionate about promoting the class and seeing
it succeed. On promotion, Jonty quite rightly says that we must be ahead of the game when it comes to advertising and promoting the class and the best vehicle for this is the website. I agree that we need to constantly improve in the area of marketing the fleet, so suggestions are always welcome. However, I must take this opportunity to thank our webmaster, Dave Cooper on behalf of the class for developing the site from nowhere to the excellent site it is today. We continued the celebrations at the National Championships at Felpham SC, where we had a very promising turnout of 43 boats. Speckie Craig took the title, from my old mate Homer Goodhead. It was great to see Neil come so close, but for me the highlight was the number of juniors at the event, which is very encouraging for the future. Let’s see if we can break the 50 barrier next year at Parkstone.
Nick Craig also won the World title in Poland. This was his third world title on the trot, which is some achievement. It was a pleasure to witness Nick in action, putting on an awesome display to defeat a strong and ever improving Kiwi team and of course double world champion Karston Hitz. I remember Nick as a talented teenager trying to keep up with us more experienced beer drinkers, then progressing into one of our best ever prospects of landing a world title and an accomplished beer drinker to boot. Now he has not only grown into one of the greatest OK sailors ever, but one of the very best amateur sailors in the UK. He is more than that though! Yes, I know he’s ugly, but he is also a tremendous guy, a wind up and a great friend to have!! God, I wish this were a speech!! The British team had an excellent World Championships in extremely
testing conditions, with 7 finishing in the top 30:• 1st Nick Craig • 11th Terry Curtis • 13th Jon Fish • 17th Robert Deaves • 22nd Simon Childs • 25th John Meadowcroft • 30th Ian Harris Another encouraging sign of growth is a more active second hand boat market, helped by a new British OK builder Alex Scoles. Alex has worked tremendously hard to develop and produce a really high quality boat, which can only help in raising the profile of the class in the UK. He managed to finish his first boat in time for the Dinghy Show in March. The show was a great success for us and the new Idol Composite boat attracted a lot of attention. Looking to next year, I hope we can continue to grow and attract more people to the class. If you come across anyone showing an interest, encourage them to try an OK. If you can’t arrange this