Commodore’s Report

STOP PRESS STOP PRESS

Southport Yacht Clubs wins Queenlands’ best Sports Club for a third consecutive year!!!!

What a great result and acknowledgement for our club.

Winning this coveted award for 3 consecutive years will now put us in the Clubs Queensland Hall ofFame. This is a fabulous recognition for a club not in a capital city.

A huge round of applause needs to go to Brett and his entire team. The amount of work, from many many people, behind the scenes is why we all have a club to be proud of...........and an award winning club!!!

It really has been an honour to be Commodore for most of this period.

Recently I read a letter from one of our staffthat referred to the club as ‘family’. This is exactly why we have a great club. We’re not just a business, not just a restaurant or a marina, we truely are a family. This culture of both staffand members feeling like a family is one of the reasons we are having the success that we are enjoying today. Congratulations team SYC.

I’m sure we’re all frustrated and probably ‘over’ covid-19 so lets see if we can take some positives out of it. We’ve taken the opportunity to give our Main Beach clubhouse a facelift inside. Normally our club is open up to 18 hours per day, 7 days a week. This makes it very hard to do any sort of renovations inside without disturbing our members enjoyment of the clubhouse.

Commodore Ray McMahon

Its had a fresh coat of paint inside, cleaned, cleaned and then cleaned again to make sure everything is sanitised ready for your return. A cafe has been introduced along with a dedicated bottle shop. We will certainly look at the results from these 2 areas to see if its something we should introduce permanently. Some ofour staffhave been doing roles that are not their normal roles. I’m sure we’ve uncovered some skills that we didn’t realise some staffhad. With several club events being cancelled/postponed we’ve had a good look at how these events have been run and see if theres a better way to run them. Events like Presentation evenings have all had to be modified this year and plenty of good ideas have come out ofthe modified versions, ideas we can use in future years.

With our sporting activities suspended its given me a bit more time on my hands. I must admit, I’ve really enjoyed it. As much as we can’t wait to get back on the water, the extra time at home has been great to ‘take a breath’ from our normal fast paced lives.

I’ve utilised this time to do some concreting, brick laying, rendering, building etc etc. I’ve really enjoyed the time but my poor old back is telling me its time to get back to the SYC.

I’m sure we’ve all got some great thoughts on how we have used this time to change our life in some small way. As we reopen our restaurant and look forward to getting back into top gear, it will be a little challenging for a while. Limited numbers allowable in the restaurant will require your patience for a short while yet. We will have to modify how we do our presentations after an on-water event for a while. Challenges we can all handle and deal with appropriately.

I would like to congratulate every one of you. These have been challenging and different times, I would understand if some members were upset over it. But you haven’t been, you’ve all accepted it for what it is and been wonderfully supportive of how we have handled it. Also our staff, with job security and uncertainty running rampant in our community, our staff have been amazing. They have all accepted it for what it is and done their best to get through it as best they can.

I take my hat offto all ofyou.

Enjoy yourselves as you return to our clubhouses. We’re so close now I can taste that glass of red while sitting there looking out over the water.

Ray McMahon Commodore