Captain’s Log Spring 2025
It is now 3 months since I became Captain of JOG. As so often is the case the first thing you discover when taking on this sort of job is that far more things and people are involved than you had previously realised and this means that during these three months, what most of us think of as “down time” a lot has happened.
First and foremost, final preparations for the 2025 season have been in hand, our first race is now less than a month away. For most of us it is a case of making sure that we have made the necessary race entries, have revalidated our IRC certificates and completed our checklists. If you have not done these, please get on with it, there is nothing our secretary hates more than the last-minute rush to ensure that individual boat entries have been completed correctly!
Generation JOG also has a busy time with a large take up for the training days on 15th March and 20-23rd March. At the time of writing, I think these are fully subscribed but if you are eligible and interested do enquire, additional places may become available. These training days represent incredible value for money and invaluable experience.
Generation JOG has come a long way since it was founded a few years ago and the Committee have been looking at its structure and will shortly be publishing a set of rules/constitution, please keep an eye out for this. We have also been looking at the funding, to date this has been derived from donations, there is concern that this may not be the best way to ensure long term security, and it is likely that we will put forward some proposals to put future funding on a more secure basis.
Last year the club introduced a Welfare policy, this is reproduced in full on the Generation JOG pages and if you have not already done so you should read it. While this is mainly concerned with younger members of the club it applies to all sailors irrespective of age or sex. We have appointed a Welfare officer. If you have any concerns, please contact the Welfare officer [email protected].
As some of you might have noticed JOG is celebrating its 75th Anniversary this year, there will be small parties at the Island SC and Royal Southern YC on 22nd March after the Lonely Tower Race with a larger celebration after the Eastbourne Race over the Easter Weekend. Look out for further details of these parties.
It may seem premature, but we are also looking at the program for 2026, Yarmouth Harbour has already been booked and many other venues require us to book well in advance. 2026 will see the return of the ever-popular JOG week, current thoughts are that this will take the form of a longish feeder race to a West Country port, followed by one or more short passage races and or one or more round the cans races from one of these ports. The aim is usually for the event to be spread over 5 or 6 days. We are thinking that perhaps the long feeder race will form part of the Offshore series and may take the place of the St Malo Race in the offshore points series for the season save that JOG week will be planned for a little later to coincide with school holidays
The Committee is also looking at the long-term future of the St Malo Race. In recent years the number of JOG entries has dropped considerably, particularly in non Fastnet years. Another factor in our consideration is that this year, for the first time, RORC is insisting that all boats must carry Yellow Bricks Trackers, this is a significant extra expense which we suspect many JOG members will be unwilling to incur. We are in discussions with RORC on this topic and if there is any change we will announce it. Please do bear in mind that this only impacts on RORC races entered through RORC and will not apply to JOG boats entering the joint JOG/RORC Cherbourg race. Dropping the St Malo race is not something the Committee will do lightly, it has been part of the JOG program for as long as anyone can remember, indeed when I first sailed with JOG, we did in fact include at least two RORC races as part of our program.
A few more points to remember at the beginning of the season, if you are looking for a boat or are short of crew do look at the JOG boat finder and crew finder. Also do check out the members benefits, I recently realised that I had missed out on discounts on my lifejacket servicing because I had not spotted that JOG has discounts for this.
I look forward to seeing you on the water. During the winter I have changed boats and am now sailing an SJ320 “Gunsmoke” (formerly Frank3), last season was a bit of a disaster with a series of last minutes crewing and gear failures, hopefully this will not be repeated in 2025. See you on the Lonely Tower Race.
Tony Tahourdin
Gunsmoke GBR6455R
