History

However they went up in due course and the rest followed quickly. The only remaining snag was the stairs, which as originally planned proved impossibly expensive. This problem was still unsolved at the beginning of the 1981 season, though we had several members working on the possibilities of building wooden stairs or getting hold of scrap.

The eventual solution was provided by Jack Heron, who found an iron staircase on a scrapyard in Norwich, and Ron Pearce whose ingenuity adapted it to make what we now have.

Before that though we had the 1981 AGM, where the most significant announcement was that the Water Company had agreed to allow up to one third of the elected places on the general committee to be filled by annual members and no longer had any objection to annual members being flag officers provided that either the Commodore or the Vice-Commodore should be a full member in anyone year. This concession should be a real help to the club because we are not yet an old enough club to have a large pool of retired members on whose goodwill we can draw for the tasks involved in running the club.

1981 winter work consisted of painting and fitting out the starter’s box and setting up a new signalling system. Meanwhile the Norwich gang repaired the south jetty and made improved landing facilities for Lasers by levelling and strengthening the south bank, which had been quite seriously eroded by wave action.

Some more work was done on the car park extension: weeds were cleared and rubble spread to make a firm surface.

In the sailing we made one unsuccessful experiment: the introduction of two special days when points racing did not take place. A large number of usually regular helmsmen apparently decided that the opportunity to get on with the garden or just stay in bed without losing points was too good to miss.

We also hosted the Broads Junior Enterprise Championships for the first time and with sufficient success for them to be anxious to return next year.

In the middle of the year the treasurer was able to repay half the loans from members.

Towards the end of the year we purchased a second-hand rescue dory in excellent condition. It has remote steering control and has already proved much easier to manoeuvre than any of its predecessors.

(Draft to this point made by John Bright and completed 13 January 1982.)