As President Allan has mentioned above, as expected a great presentation last week by sponsored students, (past & present), from Glendowie College and Sacred Heart College, who have attended the Science Forum at Auckland University.

 

President Allan pictured with our guest speakers; Alvaro Dodd, Jodie Dickins and Aidan de Souza

We had a great turnout for our Fellowship event on Friday night. Not sure if it was the lure of the delicious meal or the challenge of Bingo?  Caller-Kevany kept us listening hard to his bingo-lingo: including Dancing Queen (17); Winnie the Pooh (42) and Goodbye Teens (19).  And those were just some of the "clean" calls! After intense concentration - Gonza won the first game. Two further games ensued with "lines" in hot contention before full cards were achieved.  Thanks Ainie and Michelle for organising such a fun event.

LETs took place on Sunday and had a great attendance from clubs throughout our District.  The seminar is an excellent opportunity for upcoming Club Leaders to attend sessions aimed to assist with Strategic Planning, Publicity, Membership Retention, Projects etc.  PE Robyn attended with Gary (our club Foundation 'Guru') and Megan joined us for the afternoon sessions. St Johns was superbly represented in the presentation line-up with Rosemary contributing as part of the Public Image Awareness Panel; Ainie presented the Interact session and explained the link between RotaKids, Interact and Rotaract;  Colin presented on Public Image and Awareness, and Beryl was also in attendance as part of the hard-working event-organisation team.  Great presence all round for St Johns.

 

Glen Taylor School hosted another successful Discovery programme last Thursday and Friday. A large number of specially selected students from local primary schools attended and were supported by Discovery staff and team leaders from Tamaki College.  The children were busy, engaged and enthusiastic.  Another great programme roll-out, thank you Discovery Team.

Thanks to our major supporter of Have A Go Sailing - Orakei Marina.

 

Week Three, 13-17 May:
In week three 97 St. Johns Rotary sponsored students took on the challenges, bringing the total to date to 323.! It had to happen; the easterlies finished and the winds decided they were going to be the conductor for the week.  This started with a no brainer cancellation on Monday as a roaring northerly blew into Okahu Bay (the small keeler lying on the launching ramp on Tuesday morning confirmed this was the correct decision, hopefully this group will get to sail on May 30th).

 

What a beautiful place to learn to sail!

Tuesday dawned as a hole between weather fronts with almost no wind, but soon a light breeze from the west had the 24 young sailors from Stonefields School heading across to Devonport.  They would have made it easily but for the Waiheke ferry wanting to use the same piece of the harbour at the same time, so a quick U-turn was ordered.  With confidence on a high post lunch saw probably our most enthusiastic capsize session so far; organised chaos!

The second Stonefields group of 18 sailors arrived on Wednesday with a moderate nor-westerly blowing.  With lower numbers and a steady breeze we went for the Weta trimaran and seven Optimists, thinking we could rotate the kids through the boats.  Great plan, but within a few minutes of the fleet getting on the water it started to blow around 15 kts and throw gusts into the twenties.  The Weta was screaming across the bay, some kids were just screaming period, and the coaches felt like huntaways trying to control a lamb break at docking with seven little boats going in almost as many directions; ordinary chaos.  Fortunately Plan B kicked in and the Optis drifted onto the low tide mud off the main beach for a safe and easy (albeit mud walking) pick-up and tow back in for lunch.  With the tide back in and a steady breeze straight onto the beach some sail-less downwind sailing was the order to finish the day.

Glen Taylor School kids arrived to showery blustery south-westerly conditions on Thursday.  The plus side of the southerly swing in the wind was we now had shelter from the Orakei Marina breakwater.  The downside was that if they headed off downwind they would be on the Kelly Tarlton rocks in short time. We put to sea with a ratio of 3 coach boats to 10 Opti’s and a plan to not let any yachts stray out as far as the moored boats. And it worked for a very orderly morning and rapid development of sailing skills and confidence.  This had the benefit that the more confident and competent sailors got to do a ‘breakwater reach’ after lunch, heading out into the squalls on the edge of the harbour with a coach boat riding shotgun.

Friday and the wind suckered us again.  The third class from Churchill Park School dodged early showers to rig up, and with the overnight wind predicted to and appearing to drop down 12 Opti’s headed out to the middle of the bay in good conditions.

It’s quite hard to see SW squalls coming into Okahu Bay.  Suffice to say another ordinary chaos session ensued as yachts went racing in various directions with their occupants in various states from yahooness to panic.  As we tidied up some lovely examples of altruism occurred as classmates pitched in to assure their fellows that now they were tied to a mooring buoy they were not going to capsize (or worse).  After lunch the group was split into sailors and boaters, with the boaters towed out without sails to work on their boat and water confidence.

So, a challenging and polarising week. We may have put a few kids off sailing for life, but most were eager to sign up for more ASAP.  The days with (safe) chaos are the best days.

 

Click "Read More", for more Have A Go Pictures

Hi, the last week was one of my best weeks in my life, it was the Challenge week, It is  camp which is quite hard to explain, but I learned a lot, and I really enjoy helping the people, so I don’t have words to say how important was this week for me.  I had a buddy, Ben, and I learned a lot with Ben and I think that I helped Ben, because after a long interacting he doesn’t have problems to eat.

 
In the selection weekend with the Inbounds and the buddies went to hot pools and Woodhill park.  It was AMAZING.

 

Now I’m feeling like a new person, I needed something like that. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The following email was recently recieved from Honarary member David Stone, who is singing the praise of the good olde Rotary Christmas pudding - often the butt of some cruel jokes!!!