February 2021
Dear Members
So much time has passed since the very first lock down and very few of us were lucky enough to get out rowing during the few times when restrictions allowed – apart from the McClements who are incredibly fortunate to have 5 rowers in their family. We have our Covid Team headed up by Rhoda Dorndorf and are awaiting our Covid Safe Sports Pack from SportNI which we were lucky enough to be awarded in December.
The committee have not been idle during this time and I thought I would update you on what has been going on behind the scenes.
As most of you are aware, we applied for and were successful in obtaining a grant of £10,000 from The Big Lottery Fund, Awards for All. It took some time to finalise some items due to Covid restrictions but the club are now proud owners of a Whaly rescue boat, trailer, seat cushions and two fitted boat covers. At some stage we will be looking at members taking their RYA Powerboat 2 and/or Rescue boat courses.
The club was also successful in being awarded Phase 1 of the Sport NI Sports Hardship Fund in July last year which paid for full club insurance cover, utilities and some maintenance costs. Again, due to Covid, some maintenance has been carried out but social distancing restrictions have really hampered our plans. Charlie is about to start new foot boards having trialled his prototype and worked out how he wants to improve things for Skiffie Worlds 2022.
Last week we received a further £1,000 from our application for Phase 2 of the Sports Hardship Fund which will go towards the cost of leaving the boat in the boat park at Cook Street once restrictions are eased again.
We were also successful with being allocated an allowance of £1,720 by ANDBC’s Community Development Fund 20-21 towards rent of the Hub, the shed and fuel costs. We have been able to claim some of this and the rest is ongoing as and when restrictions allow us to finalise paperwork.
We applied successfully for funding from the Rural Micro Community Grant Scheme and are waiting to get reimbursed having had to purchase the items and put in a claim form or two! The club now has a Macbook Pro, a printer/scanner and two radios.
Bobby has been updating the club website www.portaferrycrc.co.uk so please take a look at the new layout, photos, etc. As always, this is your club so please get in touch if you have any ideas about the website or want to ask anything about what the club is doing etc. There is an area on the website for all club policies and on that note, I would like to say that we have submitted all the documents for ClubmarkNI. The next action is that we should have a visit from SportNI at some stage to check all our procedures are correct and that the committee and members are aware of policies, etc. So please visit the website to see the hard work that Bobby has put in to it; look at what is there, where it is on the site and a reminder of who people are and their roles in the club. If we are successful with becoming accredited it means that we will be considered for funding in the future – funders are becoming inundated with applications and we have been advised that a simple way for them to reduce applications for consideration is to now have Clubmark accreditation as a criteria. More importantly being accredited is recognition of the high standards that our club works towards and for the contribution that we make to the development of sport in NI.
Lennie has approached St Columbas and we hope to get a fair number of juniors expressing an interest in a junior scheme which we will be setting up when Covid allows us. Hopefully we can also get a few parents hooked as well!
You may not be aware but TeamStuff, the App we used to book our rowing sessions with, was a casualty of Covid 19 and so we are currently looking at alternative ways of booking social and training sessions. Possibly it will be via the website rather than an App – we will keep you posted.
It has been fun seeing some of you on zooms – bingo and quizzes – and we hope to have more social evenings shortly. Anyone keen to host a St Patrick’s Day quiz?
It was great seeing members out kayaking together when they couldn’t row, or swimming when they couldn’t kayak. The pull of the water is very strong!
Keep well. Keep safe and keep fit (Skiffieworlds July 2022 don’t forget!).
All the best to you and your families
Amanda
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