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The trophy, which is a silver rose-bowl, is to be known as the “Needham Trophy”, and is to be awarded to the fastest boat (on corrected time), which is 100 or more years old, over the season. As the EC OGA uniquely runs an annual points series, the Needham Trophy will be one of the trophies of that competition.  The East Coast OGA runs points’ series for both gaffers and classic bermudan yachts. Six or seven races out of the calendar are designated, and all the boats which take part in East coast events are automatically entered in the points series. With such a variety of courses and race locations, it gives a true test of the performances of boats of nearly all types. With 70 or 80 boats in the “pool” it’s a good competition. It’s not just a test of the best boat of the day, it’s a test of boat and crew which can constantly deliver. Have a look on the “Reports” part of the website. In the meantime, if your old gaffer is a hundred years’ old, make her day by entering events on the East Coast, there’s a lovely prize for her! Note: It is with sadness we learn that Karen Needham (aka professionally as Karen Sparck Jones), passed away on 4th April this year. Readers are advised to go to www.cl.cam.ac.uk/misc/obituaries/sparck-jones where there is an obituary, which also gives an outline of her extraordinary career at Cambridge. So if you are thinking of insuring your Old Gaffer, or any other ship you might own, why not click here to go on to the Yachtmaster Insurance site. If you like what you see and do decide to place your business with them, say you are a member of the OGA, and we should receive a welcome donation from Y.I.S. However, a certain Mr Reed has taken me to task. He says the first race for gaff rigged vessels was actually in 1956, off Heybridge on the River Blackwater. He said it was a start from anchor, and the fleet raced down the Bradwell at the mouth of the Blackwater, and celebrations were had in the Green Man Pub. Skipper of the last boat bought the beer. Matika, Pembeth, Thelma, Fairy, Bona, Kate, Polly, Lizzie Annie and Roomshall (spelling may be wrong because she was Dutch) were amongst the starters. These early Eastcoasters also had an event in August over the Bank Holiday, the requirement being to visit as many pubs as possible over the weekend, before returning to Heybridge, no doubt to the tap room of the Jolly Sailor. If anyone can throw any more light on this “first” Old Gaffers Race, I would like to hear from him. It might seem strange that Maldon were unaware of this annual event in their own backyard, when they staged the race in 1963. But even to this day Maldoners and Heybridge Basinites rarely speak to each other. This is something to with the fact that the Basinites used take a short cut across the river at low tide, with a spare set of clothes, clean up in the swimming pool, and have their way with the Maldon lassies before returning the same way to Heybridge. Sometimes there was more than muddy footprints to show that they had been there… With the closure of the swimming pool/lido at Marine Parade by the HSE, perhaps time will heal this situation! We do have an East Coast Register in spreadsheet format, information we use to work out handicaps, but this is not a database, and does not have photographs. It is planned to have a system similar to the Dutch VKSJ archive- do have a look on their site via our links page. Basically each boat has a page with a photograph and outline information. A mock-up is shown below. For privacy reasons we do not intend to put owners information in the public domain. The primary intention is for readers of this site to be able to access boat information by name or by type of boat or other fields. So if you wanted, for example, to look up a boat whose name begins with D, you would click on D and choose one of the listed boats, and the page would come up. Alternatively if you wanted to look at boats of a particular type, you would click on types, select the type, and a list of boats of that type would come up, which you could choose from. Try: http://www.eastcoastclassics.co.uk/blist.htm You will see a very straightforward way of choosing either the first letter of the boats name or the type. There are only three letters listed so far, and two types of boats with two types of rig, clicking on the info for the boat takes you to its own page with the same links at the top, that way you can easily choose another letter or type and continue searching. We are interested to hear any ideas members and other website users may have. Have you any expertise in databases- we are considering using Microsoft Access to create our database? And of course we need information from boat owners. We have some on our spreadsheet for many of the boats, which regularly take part in our events. We may have an identifiable photograph we can use, but we could do with more. And if the boat has an interesting history, undertaken an interesting voyage or had a major restoration, it would be nice to be able to access that text and pictorial information via a link from the boat page. A further consideration will be the ability of boat owners to update their information on line, by filling in a form on this site. This would then email to the OGA, who then sift it and pass it on to the webmaster. We would like to hear from you, to see what you think, so we can provide a register, which would best meet our needs. If you haven’t already filled in a boat register form, go to “forms”, where there is one you can print off and post to me. (Pete Thomas, Green Farm Barn, Bartham Green, Claydon, Suffolk, IP6 0QF or email me at p.m.thomas@talk21.com) If you have a suitable photograph include that. We also need to hear from you if you specifically do not want your boat to appear in this register. Watch this space for developments! With the demise of registers like Lloyds, and modern registers only having the barest of details it is important we all support this project. The plaque will stay with the boat, and will enable future owners to refer to the register when perhaps a lot of information is lost, such as during a period of abandonment. If you do not know your number, could you contact Nick Miller 01229 474737.  |
