Laying Up Supper

The Laying Up Supper is the traditional annual dinner at many sailing clubs. London Corinthian has always upheld this tradition with a good meal followed by the Prize Giving and in recent years, a guest speaker. In practice London Corinthian has never "Laid Up" (packed away) their boats for winter, as we have always sailed all year round.

Saturday, 3rd December 2005 at 19:30.

Guest speaker is Gwyneth Lewis a poet and author of 'Two in a Boat' - A Marital Voyage.

Tickets are £25. Please sign up by signing up on list in bar. Cheques to LCSC can be left in the letter box outside the office 'FAO Simon Ashenden - Laying Up Supper'. Numbers will be limited so please confirm and pay as soon as you can.

Saturday, 4th December 2004 at 19.30

Guest Dick Batt, Sailmaker, Merlin rocket and International 14 Sailor

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Saturday, 22 November 2003 at 19.30

After-dinner speaker: World-ranked No 1 49er sailor Chris Draper

Three-course dinner, Dress: smart casual

Presentation of trophies and unveiling of Bill Simpson's portrait.

Tickets are £20. Sign up on list in bar or, see Maggie and Chris.

Laying Up Supper - Sat 24th November 2001

This year the club has enjoyed the best turn out of dinghies for racing on the Thames, so there was keen competition for the prizes. There was particular admiration for Bill Simpson who at 84 is still scooping up the trophies - at least he knows where the wind is on the river, someone brightly pointed out. The only blip on the prize list was for the Spring Handicap Series, which Paul explained was because Una Hodgkins had frogmarched those that might have sailed into helping her at training courses. So no awards there, but the courses were a huge success.

Some of the cups were dusted off for the first time for the offshore sailors where there has been more success for the club. Four yachts competed in the Fastnet race, six in the Round the Island and 109 members participated in offshore events. The competitive spirit of the racers continued into late autumn with the Fastnet Crew Challenge Trophy. This is a new award for those who participated in the Fastnet and decided to fight it out amongst themselves in a match race on the Solent. Chris Winnington-Ingram and his crew proved the victors.

The Peter Roberts Trophy (for meritorious service) was specially awarded to Tony Robinson. Commodore Beverly Beech admitted it was an invidious task to award, as so many had been involved in securing Linden House from the local council. This was an appreciation of the huge amount of time and dedication Tony had committed to wade through the minutiae of detail needed to get the building out of their hands.

The Laying-Up Supper rounded off with Rex Barker, the after-dinner guest speaker who was commander of the hospital ship in the Falklands War, also sails Class 1 Ocean Racers and now runs his own management training company. His topic was teamwork - man and boat. A subject which, I think, a few of the prize-winners know something about.
Francesca Fearon

In days of yore the dinghies at The Corinthian were laid up for the winter and the sailors gathered in the evening to celebrate and think of other things to do in the winter. As time passed the dinghies were sailed throughout the year but the laying up supper continued and offered an opportunity to present cups to the winners of the year's handicap and series racing and a chance to present successful off-shore sailors with some magnificent cups.

(Actually, I don't think we ever "layed up" - ed. )

This year the laying up supper had Richard Houghton as guest after-dinner speaker. As you are no doubt aware, he and his crew in "Act of Defiance" was also awarded first over all in class at RORC this year and Richard spoke about his career in sailing, starting out of control in an Enterprise, through to his success in the Round Britain race.

Lena Gustafsson Winner of the offshore rally in Playgirl, her Etchels 22	Philip Lee Most improved Helm
Richard Houghton		The Diners

To balance things next year, we would be most interested in having a guest dinghy sailor speak next year.

This year we had a great meal, followed by an efficient prize giving - not too many or long speeches!

Special guest speaker and member Jock Wishart (Adventurer) gave us an insight into some of his exciting past projects. Starting from his days as foredeck on the British 12 Metre America's Cup yacht "Lionheart", till being crew on the fastest recent round the world record in a motor boat.

Mostly he talked about his 64 day 2 man gruelling rowing race accross the Atlantic. Although he strongly recommends none of us try it, he says it was a guaranteed way to loose three stone. Evidently the boat design was very difficult as the windage on the large stern structure tended to spin the boat. Jock thinks it should have had a centreboard.