More than 100 sailors and friends of the HYC keelboat fraternity celebrated their successes at the annual Presentation Dinner with sumptuous food, wine, speeches and trophies culminating in dancing to the pulsating music of Red Hot Bain-Maries.

Setting the tone right from the start, Keel Captain and MC for the night Tim Tucker entertained with his witty intros, funny dad-jokes, apt choice of music to accompany presentations and a less than formal summary of inclusion activities at the Club.

The Captain was entitled to be upbeat; Show Me, after picking up the Overall Consistency trophy for Division 2, was crowned Club Champion ahead of Perle (John Bird) and Farrouk (Des and Gail Riley). Based on the consistency races, ocean races and mini (NCS) series and open to boats across all three divisions, winning Club Champion is not easy and Show Me fully deserves its success.

Perle and Kind of Blue (Boyd Timler) were winners of the Overall Consistency trophies in divisions 1 and 3 respectively. Others to win multiple trophies include Bad Habits (Ian Holder), Pinta (Ray Murphy), Vaya Con Dios (Chris Blackney), Blue Chip (Keith and Deborah Fisk), Covert Operation (Bart Brouwer), Circa (Martin Eyer), Intuition (Marc Carpenter), Lamotrek (John Akers), Mulberry (Mark Pitt), Resolute (Damian and Kerry Martin), Whispering Jack (Bruce Bradford) and Farrouk (Des and Gail Riley).

Ray Murphy gave an account of the successful Offshore Racing (ORWA) campaign by Mulberry; this and the season results can be found in the June edition of Compass, out shortly.

Most Improved went to Pinta (Ray Murphy) and Crew Person of the Year was a very worthy winner, from equally deserving nominees, Scott Frame (Perle). The Thursday Sailing participation trophy went to Bruce Bradford on Whispering Jack, the Double Handed trophy to Martin and Sharon Eyer on Circa, and the newly re-badged ORC trophy went to Bart Brouwer on Covert Operation.

The JOS (Joy of Sailing) award went to Stelfred (Laraine Brindle) with a package donated by Martin Eyer of CDM that would be useful for extended periods of time on the sea.

Highlighted by multiple photos of him at numerous trophy presentations as part-owner of the very successful Covert Operation, those present fell silent to pause and remember a great contributor and friend of HYC: Graham Atkinson.

Many thanks to all the staff of the Club for making the evening run so smoothly and especially Gail Riley and her team for the overall organisation of a wonderful Keel Dinner.

The first winter race is on June 9th heralding the start of season 2024/25. Hope to see you all there and we’ll do it all again.

John Bird