THE COMMODORE

Much of what I am now writing was composed when I was sitting, motionless in solid traffic, on the Winchester By-Pass in Hampshire alongside a notice requesting me to Reduce Speed Now'. A few yards further on a Police notice gave warning of a `Traffic Queue Ahead'! No wonder I found myself comparing such conditions with life afloat (even though I remembered being overtaken by a lobster pot off the Brittany coast last year in unkind wind and tide). So I've read the News from Voyaging Members in the Newsletters with some envy combined with great interest and with pleasure that reports have been received from many members, a number of whom had not previously written about their activities. Please keep the reports - be they two-liners or longer accounts - coming in and don't forget the Club's Cruising Information Service. Murray Kenneth has kindly agreed to take over the running of this Service, which Anne Hammick has been building up over the last few years. Murray can respond to requests for information on many areas and welcomes contributions enabling him to add to and update the folios. Write to him for the latest listing at 36 Upper Gardner Street, Brighton, East Sussex BN1 4AN, UK, enclosing return postage if possible.

In the September Newsletter Jeremy set out the anticipated vacancies for Flag Officers and for the Committee next March, and I very much hope he will have received some nominations by 1st November. Although this urging from me for nominations will be published after that date, I do hope that any member willing to nominate him or herself, or another member, to join the team will get in touch with Jeremy - we would welcome some new blood on the Committee.

The fact that this seems to be the only rallying cry or pep talk from me in this issue of Flying Fish speaks well, I think, for the healthy and lively state of our Club due, as always, to the meticulous and unflagging work of our Secretaries, our Flag Officers, Roving or representing other countries, our Port Officers and those who organise stimulating sailing and social events. I would like again to use the word `stimulating' to describe the Newsletter which is now being set to Australian members by Sid Yaffe, Rear Commodore Australia, and his Club Captain, Mrs Pat Wall, of which Pat has been kind enough to send me copies. With my close association with that country it is pleasing to be kept in touch in this way.

The highlight, for me, of the 1992 sailing season was the OCC Baltic Rally at Helsinki followed by three weeks with Tony and Jill Vasey and Ann Fraser on board Shiant in the Baltic, an area which I had not previously visited. An account of that cruise appears elsewhere in Flying Fish so I will not add to it other than to say how thoroughly enjoyable it all was - can anything beat good sailing in a fine boat in an interesting area in excellent company? Despite general lack of wind in home waters in the early summer and rather too much later on I also enjoyed sailing to Normandy, the Channel Islands and the West Country in June, and another short visit to Normandy in August. As less fortunate members contemplate the winter work I am making plans to join Pat and Mike Pocock in Blackjack in Tasmania in December and to have a stopover on the way home with Peter and Rozy Barton in Rose Rambler of Devon. They have set me an even more challenging task this time - to find them in Malaysia, or will it be Thailand? Perhaps my envy of voyaging members isn't totally justified after all!

By the time Flying Fish is published I will have returned from Chesapeake Bay after attending the Fall Rally to which Bill and Alice Caldwell have kindly invited me. I am so happy to be able to accept their invitation this year, also the generous offer of hospitality from Mike and Beverly King at Kilmarnock, Virginia, and I look forward to meeting many members in that attractive area, in which Hum and I sailing in Rose Rambler in 1972.

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