Sailing Magazine
by Richard Crockett
Administering any sport is a thankless task with little or no rewards, but thankfully in days of yore there were people who put a lot of positive time and effort into administering the sport of sailing.
Whether that’s the case today is open for debate, and is not really the point of this feature today, but always a question worth answering nonetheless.
Following is a teaser of what the Zwartkops meeting was all about as reported in SA Yachting magazine in September 1966:
“Zwartkops Yacht Club, near Port Elizabeth, is known as the “home of South African yachting”. With its strange, almost eerie ship-like building staring sombrely at the fast-silting waters before it, the club has been the birthplace of South Africa’s greatest indigenous class, the Sprog; the home club of some of the country’s leading exponents of yachting and the first base of the South African Yacht Racing Association Council.
“Last month the walls echoed again. Not to the voices of councillors heatedly arguing about petty differences of opinion. Instead, the voices were stern and of one purpose. The sport has outgrown itself: it must be changed, they said.
“The voices represented delegates from the Royal Cape Y.C. in the south to the Mountain Y.C. in the north. There was no dissension about the meeting’s intention. The sport has become cumbersome, the council unwieldy. The onus was on the council: They must alter themselves. They differed only on how to apply the surgeon’s knife.
“For nearly two days (August 20 and 21) the 20 councillors and an equal number of spectators crammed into the hot upper room of the Z.Y.C. to hammer out firm proposals for changing S.A.Y.R.A. and yachting.
“It was the most important annual meeting since the body was inaugurated in Durban during 1947. The councillors were in no mood for time-wasting talk and delays. They methodically overhauled yachting’s structure.”
For those interested in the historic workings of the national sailing body, this feature gives a very good insight.
As a bonus in these pages is a feature entitled “Designing a Clubhouse” – how the Cape Peninsular Aquatic Club went about this.
READ IT ALL HERE: 1966 09 – SA Yachting – historic SAYRA zwartkops meeting – OCR
