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News Archive 2009


December 2009: Christmas Lunch and Boxing Day Regatta

On Boxing Day the Setley Cup and Seahorse Trophy Junior Model Yacht Regatta, organised by the Royal Lymington Yacht Club, took place at Setley Pond; a tradition which has been maintained for some 50 years! A report of the action and the results is available (pdf file, 68Kb). The photographs by Michael Derrick show the winning monohull, winning multihull, and the two winning yachts together.

More photos are available in our Club Events gallery.

The 2009 Christmas Lunch was held at the South Lawn Hotel Milford-on-Sea, on 12th December. An excellent time was had by all and there are some photos in our Club Events gallery. The raffle raised £100 for "Help for Heroes" and £56 for "Macmillan Nurses" (see our Club Charities page). Many thanks to Lorna for organising the event.


November 2009: Rain, rain, and more rain!

November saw not much action at the pond with high winds and rain on most club days. During the month Peter Taylor's rain gauge in Southampton recorded about 1/4 of our typical annual rainfall in this one month alone. Here are some photos taken around Brockenhurst (just north of Setley Pond) on the 29th November. They show the "Water Splash" ford which leads to the main street, and the Lymington River in flood at Balmer Lawn (click on photos for larger version).

August 2009: Lymington Lifeboat day and the Solent Cup Steering Competition

The Steering Competition for the Solent Cup (Sunday, 23rd August) saw a very good turnout at the pond. The event was won by Andy Griggs, second was David McNair Taylor, and third was Andrew Davis; all had clear rounds so the result was decided on timing.

Full results and photos of the event are available on our our Club Events gallery.


Lymington Lifeboat day 2009 On Sunday 2nd August the Club exhibited at the Lymington Lifeboat day (the photos are in our Club Events gallery). The Lymington day is a much smaller event than Calshot, but that gives it a more friendly atmosphere and it is good that we can display the model boats inside the Lifeboat House. We had a letter of thanks and presentation from Mac Hall (Deputy Launching Authority). The Club's donation buckets alone totalled over £200 (let alone the main collection boxes) and there is also a huge public relations gain from such a popular event.


July 2009: Calshot Lifeboat day and the first birthday of this web site!

Calshot Lifeboat day 2009 On Sunday 12th July the Club participated in the Calshot Lifeboat day. The Calshot RNLI had built us a fine boat pond and Chris Chattaway devoted most of the day to giving potential young modellers control of one of his boats for 50p a time (donated to the RNLI), a superb effort Chris! Photos are available on our Club Events gallery.

1st July 2009: This web site is one year old today! "Officially" launched on 1st July 2008, the site is constructed using page templates originally written at The National Oceanography Centre in Southampton. Therefore, to celebrate our birthday, the "Completely Different" photo gallery featured pictures taken by Alan Bond during a tour of the Oceanography Centre. And, believe it or not, last month was our best ever for the numbers of visits to the site... an average of 277 per day! You can get the details from our "About this Site" page.


June 2009: The Richard Graham Steering Competition and the SRCMBC Movie Channel

Movies ...all the movies are now accessed from our SRCMBC Channel on YouTube. The YouTube channel looks something like the picture left (click on it for larger version).

This "Film Camera" icon indicates if a movie is available when you access photo galleries from our "Photo Galleries and Movies" web page. Unfortunately we can't direct you to the specific movie but here is a "Demonstration" of how easy it is to find a movie on the SRCMBC Channel.
A few movies are not on the SRCMBC Channel, these are marked by an filmstrip icon (left). Click on their link to view them in a popup window.

The Richard Graham Steering Competition (Sunday, 7th June) was won by Chris Chattaway with a clear round. Second was Andrew Davis (also clear), and third was Andy Griggs (1 touch). It was definitely a course that favoured smaller boats! Here are the full results. Lorna presented Chris with his prize (a bottle of wine). Photos are available on our Club Events web page.


May 2009: Navy Day, R36R regatta, a sinking, and vandalism!

Vandalism at the pond! Near the end of the month the Setley Pond sign was broken down and thrown behind the bushes. Admittedly it was getting rather rotten near the base... but still?

24th May 2009 We bid a sad farewell to Ray Hellicar's much modified GT400. With a 200W brushless motor and 8 NiMH cells it was very fast but did one fast turn too many, (click on the photo for a larger view). Soon after the tragedy Ray had his GT480 out on the water!

R36R Metropolitan and Southern District Sailing Championships were held at Setley Pond on the 16th May. It was a day of strong and gusty winds which gave fast sailing and one or two mishaps!

Navy Day on the 10th of May saw good weather and an impressive collection of models. Photos are available on our Club Events web page.


April 2009: Bollywood Fame, New Harbour Quays, and International links

SRCMBC goes to Bollywood: Following our recent break through into the Japanese fashion market (see below), the entertainment value of SRCMBC videos has now been recognised by the Indian Film Industry! The site (left, click for enlargement) is described as follows: "Bollywood Popat has today grown to become one of the most successful entertainment portal. Produced by an editorial team known for its quality, innovation and integrity, Bollywood Popat, has a readership base of over few hundred thousand to its credit. With bollywood news as well as television and regional news, it appeals to people from all walks of life across the globe. It enjoys a strong brand recognition among readers as well as advertisers" ...the SRCMBC fame continues to grow!

Breakfast on the Quay!: At the end of March "Joint Harbour Master" Peter Soffe received this message (left, click for enlargement) from one of our members. Peter's comment was that, with enough notice he would have the cafe on the quay openned for breakfast at the pond.

Here we see John's "Ernie" departing from the quay having enjoyed a "Full English Breakfast" of the kind that you can only get at those greasy English quay side cafes! Note the resulting list as the crew member moves to the port side!

An International Link: Meanwhile, Alan Bond and myself have been answering queries (using Google translate) from a Spanish modeller, "Pepe", about Alan's servo slower Hints and Tips feature for which an update is planned for the near future. Pepe sends his regards to all our club members and their "precious" models.


March 2009: Better Weather and the Highcliffe Show

At last's it's spring and at the start of the month the Club's new Rescue Boat, the aptly named "Phoenix" courtesy of Ken Dyer, made it's debut.

The club held its Annual Show in Highcliffe on Saturday, 14th March, and helped raise £738.55 for the RNLI. This included £92.50 from sales of copies of the club calendar and some historic "Sheet Anchor" magazines. There are some photographs here and a video of the event by Louis Vaisey on our Movie Gallery page. The event was well attended, our thanks to everyone who took part.

Prompted by our many views from around the world the SRCMBC site has gone mutilingual (thanks to "Google Translate"). The translation is automatic so no doubt there will be mistakes, but it will be interesting to see how much this new facility is used. Also...

SRCMBC seems now to have a Japanese branch... at least for our movie gallery (see left, click on it for a partial enlargement). It seems to be the web site for an online fashion store which is relaying our YouTube videos as part of it's entertainments offering. If you want to explore further this is the web address but we emphasise that the SRCMBC has absolutely no responsibility for anything you might find on their site!


February 2009: Groundhog Day

At the risk of sounding like a scratched gramophone record (for those who can remember what they were)... the bad weather continues! It's feeling like Groundhog Day (as in the movie). Still on the 2nd February the Groundhog would not have seen it's shadow, (explanation for none North American viewers!), since Southern England was cloudy with snow and ice covering the roads; the heaviest snowfall for 18 years or more. So perhaps the weather will soon change! So not too much model boat action at the pond, but at least the pond is filling up. My weather station recorded 4.4" in January and we've already had 2.3" in February (average annual rainfall in Southampton is 32", last year I recorded nearly 38").

January 2009: Ice on the pond.

At the start of the month the pond froze over with ice that you could walk on. There are some photos in the "At the Pond" section on our Photo Galleries page. Although the pond thawed by the middle of the month, bitterly cold winds meant few members visited the lake, and those that did didn't always stay that long!


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Page maintained by Peter Taylor Last modified: 14:05, 04 February 2012