Chairperson’s update December 2017

Hi all,

Welcome to the fourth ‘Chairperson’s Quarterly Update of 2017, and the first of the new committee year. The idea of these updates is to keep all you members of St. Michael’s Rowing Club up to speed with what’s going on within the club committee and the wider world where it’s relevant to what we do. The previous updates are pasted below for any new members, or for anyone who missed them.

It might be the middle of winter, but there’s actually a load to tell you all about. So here goes.

•         New boat grant!
•         Autumn events and AGM
•         Winter Maintenance
•         Winter training
•         Committee activity
•         National rowing politics

New boat grant!

You will probably have seen the flurry of online activity 2 weeks ago, but the great news is that we have been awarded €21,089 under the Sports Capital Programme towards a new skiff, road trailer, and oars. Huge credit to last year’s committee and in particular to Martin O’Dowd, who put the application in last February. We will need to fundraise in the order of €2,000 ourselves towards this project over the coming year, on top of our existing fundraising targets (€4,000)

The 2017 round of nationwide grants covered a whopping 7 east coast skiffs, so with unprecedented demand the committee had to move quickly. The two active boat builders of recent years have been father and son team Maurice and Louis Hunkin of Fowey, Cornwall, who have built 14+ east coast skiffs, and local man Terry Keogh who is on his 4th skiff. Both outfits are good friends of the club, but neither were in a position to start a build until Summer 2018. As such, and with a 3-5 month build time, we’re looking at the 2019 season before the new girl will hit the water. Weighing up the pros and cons of the options available, the committee voted overwhelmingly to approach Hunkins, who have built both the DL Nua and the Naomh Michael, and we are working towards a start date of August 2018 for the build. We are hoping to procure the new road trailer and oars – the other parts of the grant award – for the coming 2018 season, in advance of the skiff.

In related news, we have applied for a Heritage grant via DLR County Council towards producing a history of the first 100 years of St. Michael’s Rowing Club, which is a project in our  2016 Strategic Plan . We hope to get news on this soon, so fingers crossed!

Autumn events and AGM

Since the last quarterly update, we’ve had a good few events. A big thanks to all who helped organise, particularly Aisling.

• Table Quiz – Friday 15 September at the Graduate. Well done to all competitors. A great night, and over €1,200 raised!
• Annual General Meeting in the Purty – Monday 2 October . Well attended and some great work done. AGM minutes to follow within the coming week.
• End of season presentation and party in the DMYC – Saturday 14 October. Plenty of ECRC medals and special ‘Golden Fender’ awards to distribute. See email from club account dated 28/10/17 for a list of all winners and some great photos.
• Christmas karaoke & extravageansaí party in McKenna’s – Saturday 9 December. Another great hooley, headed up by Gary Byrne. Well done to Trophy and wooden spoon winners Niall Dennehy and Ann Hannan respectively.

Winter Maintenance

Winter Maintenance has been on-going since early October every Monday (7-9), Wednesday (7-9) and Saturday (11-1), with a Christmas break starting this Saturday 16th. There has been some great work done with 37 members putting in a total of 238 hours so far. The full maintenance log is available at https://bit.ly/MicksMaint , which has been filled up to last Saturday, and the top end of the leaderboard is looking like this

There is bad news though. If you look at how this work rate compares to the three previous winters, it shows we are way off where we need to be to be to get 5 boats onto the water for the end of March. See the graphs below. Last winter and the winter before we had the benefit of CG adding extra hours through the ‘Tús’ scheme, along with the requirement for mandatory hours for those competing in the Celtic Challenge. The winter before, we had one less boat to maintain!

We have no contingency plan in place for what happens if we get to the start of the season without the boats being ready. At this time WE ARE ASKING ALL MEMBERS TO UP THEIR GAME ON THE MAINTENANCE FRONT FOR JANUARY AND FEBRUARY. If you haven’t been down to help out, please please do. And if you’ve come down already, please consider increasing your hours. This is your club, and you only get out of it what you put in.

On a brighter note, we have added a dehumidifier an extractor fan to our boatshed arsenal in recent weeks thanks to a DLR community grant, so workers and boats should be that bit more comfortable in the boatshed!

Winter training

To keep the winter bellies at bay, there is regular off-water training available by way of boxercise with Monkstown Boxing Club every Tuesday and Thursday 7-8. It’s not formal St. Michael’s training, and is on a ‘drop in’ basis, but it’s an affiliation that has worked well in recent winters. You will always find a few of your clubmates there on any given night. It’s a fiver a pop (into a jar), there’s no actual punching other than the bags, and you don’t need any special equipment. A great workout too!

On foot of a motion at the AGM, there will be weekend rowing available to members who have put in 10+ hours of maintenance as soon as 3 boats are finished their winter TLC. We’re currently at around a boat and half.

Turning to training of the mind, there will be a ‘Safeguarding / Code of Ethics’ training course on January 27th for those of us working with the chizzlers. More info to follow.

Committee activity

We had our 2017 AGM On Oct 2nd, and the following people were elected to the committee. At our first committee meeting, we assigned the following roles. A big thanks to the outgoing committee and to everyone who allowed their names to go forward for election this year.

Captain                            Chris Greene

Chairperson                     Ger Ryan (returning)

Youth Captain                       Brendan White

Fundraising & Social            Aisling Lahiffe (returning)

Maintenance Coordinator  Stephen Ring

Membership Secretary        Deanna O’Connor

Safety & Logistics             Niall Dennehy

Secretary                         Enya Murray

Treasurer                           Dave Cullen

We have met each month in October, November, and December, and as you can see, there’s a lot going on! On foot of another motion at the AGM, the four target areas of the 2016-2021 Club Strategy have been allocated to leaders and co-leaders, and within this we have selected a number of key targets that we are focusing on for the coming year. Check out the updated strategy here.

Our Captain has put together his Selection Committee for 2018. It maintains a 50/50 split inside and outside the committee, increases the number from 4 to 6, and is just one off gender balance (more women coxes please!!). They are as follows: Chris Greene (Captain), Amy Smith, Dave Cullen, Mel Mardon, Stephen Ring, Gareth Whittington.

Our Youth Captain has put together a Youth Subcommittee of Brendan White (Youth Captain), Liz O’Toole, Gareth Whittington, and Katie Gaynor.

There is also a subcommittee looking at Club kit and sponsorship headed up by Aisling Lahiffe, with Mark Fennel, Claire Keay, Mark Fennell, and Liz O’Toole also on board.

Another area of work this winter is underway on brining a ‘members area’ to www.dunlaoghairerowing.com which it is hoped will pull together all the information and resources that we need to be the best rowers and club members we can be! Availability sheets, regatta info, training resources, blue book, these updates, and so much more awaits. The subcommittee for this is Deanna O’Connor, Ger Ryan, Eoin Clarke, and Vin Scully.

National rowing politics

Some of you will be more aware of this than others but there’s an almighty hullabaloo happening in coastal rowing politics in Ireland at the moment, and we’re trying to keep up to speed. The short story is that we will be holding an information meeting for all interested members on Thursday, January 11th (time and venue TBC) to fully brief members and to help formulate a club position on the emerging situation. For those interested, here’s a brief synopsis.

•         Effectively, we as a club affiliate to the East Coast Rowing Council who in turn affiliate to the Irish Coastal Rowing Federation at a national level. Up until February 2017, the ICRF were loosely affiliated to Rowing Ireland , who are the sole National Governing Body for rowing in this country. Due to a bust-up around governance and transparency, RI cut the ICRF loose in February.
•         In order to retain access to Garda vetting for child protection reasons, St. Michael’s affiliated directly to Rowing Ireland in Spring 2017 as a coastal club, while also retaining our affiliation to the ECRC and therefore the ICRF. Several other clubs did the same, including Arklow and Wicklow on the east coast and around 20 others around the country, but it transpires there was more to this than initially met the eye.
•         In late summer, several of these clubs approached RI to set up a coastal rowing division independent of, and effectively competing with the ICRF, which has since happened. In recent weeks there have been meetings of both the ICRF and this new coastal division of RI and we have had reps at both meetings. The matter has also been discussed amongst east coast clubs at two recent ECRC meetings.
•         As things stand, we remain affiliated through both ‘strands’, with no direct consequences, but what began as a decision based on practicalities has evolved into something quite different. We will need to tread carefully in the coming months to ensure that the decisions we make are the best for our club and our sport. To many this will be eye-rollingly boring, and to others, it will be fascinating and hugely important for the future of coastal rowing in Ireland. More on January 11th for those interested.

So that’s me finished. Well done on a great Autumn’s club activity off the water, and Happy Christmas to you and yours. See you in 2018!

Yours rowingly,

Ger Ryan,  Club Chairperson, St. Michael’s Rowing Club – Dun Laoghaire.