VICTORIA
The Warrnambool St Ayles Skiff Community Rowing Club
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The Warrnambool St Ayles Skiff Community Rowing Club
Members of the Warrnambool Club started out whaleboat rowing (beetles) and we have called ourselves the Stroke Team because some of us were members of the Warrnambool Base Hospital’s Stroke Team that cares for stroke survivors while inpatients. Since 2011 we have promoted the National Stroke Foundation’s F.A.S.T. stroke recognition message and plan to continue doing this as it has effectively become a tradition for our Club.
So in short we are all about promoting the health and well-being benefits of rowing and being involved in a wonderful group activity with a stroke awareness and prevention twist. We chose to ‘grab an oar and get involved’ in the St Ayles Skiff movement to do this. A foundation group of about ten members agreed to raise funds to purchase a St Ayles Skiff kit. We were incorporated as a not for profit association on the 17th March 2014.
As the Australian St Ayles Skiff community was quite small in those days we were soon linked in with other groups who had already built a skiff. Several of our members made the pilgrimage to Franklin and some of the Living Boat Trust skiffies came to Warrnambool to check us out. Seeing what others had achieved served to inspire and enthuse our growing membership.
Our initial fund-raising efforts were a slow burn, taking off only after a successful crowd funding campaign conducted over 6 weeks in August/September 2014 earned us $10,000. The necessary networking and promotion that is part a crowdfunding effort not only achieved the target but it also made the Warrnambool community aware of our existence and our goals. Applications to local philanthropic trusts, the Gwen and Edna Jones Foundation and the Ray and Joyce Eubergang Foundation were both successful with $5000 provided by each. The Warrnambool Community Development Fund via the Warrnambool City Council donated $1000 and an anonymous donor contributed $2000 towards our yet to be built boat trailer. We effectively arrived at a $25,000 bank balance by the end of October 2014.
At this point we ordered not one but two skiff kits from Stray Dog Boatworks. The kits arrived in November and we held a small wooden boat expo’ on the Warrnambool Civic Green to effectively celebrate our fund-raising success as well as introduce ourselves to the local community. Jim Barr brought Cariad (AU02) and Robert Ayliffe brought the John Liddy (AU04) to show the community what we had in mind. The Club gained 6 new members that day.
The Club had formed a close relationship with Flagstaff Hill Maritime Museum where we started building in early 2015. Several of our members had built small wooden boats before and others had useful technical skills. The rest of us did the whatever we could to help, learning much along the way. We also had access to Flagstaff Hill’s Shipwright, Jeff McMurrich’s expertise as well as his workshop and tools.
Over the 11 month build time we conducted celebrations like drinks and nibbles at the build site to share the journey with as many of our supporters and donors as possible. Fast Messenger (AU07) was launched on 1 November 2015. With Cariad and the John Liddy once again in Warrnambool at that time, the Club staged its first St Ayles Skiff regatta on the Hopkins River. This was an impromptu and informal event but a resounding success.
Since launching Fast Messenger we have rowed her on local waterways in the South West of Victoria and traveled further afield to participate in promotion, regattas and raids. The original core membership of the Club, Stroke Team have continued to row whaleboats and of course have joined with the new members in rowing Fast Messenger and other visiting skiffs. We have staged the South West Regatta (inclusive of the Victorian St Ayles Skiff Championships) over three consecutive years from 2017-2019, which has seen crews come from across Victoria and interstate to compete. Despite a hiatus for this event in 2020 we plan to stage the Victorian St Ayles Skiff Championships again soon. It is likely that the future of that event will entail alternate hosts perhaps on a biennial basis.
It has become clear that not all people want to row in the context of a regatta and therefore over 2019 to early 2020 the Club has dedicated energy to social rowing and engaging new members. It has also been important to reinvigorate out second build which had not moved much beyond its existence as a kit since 2017.
Our second build progressed well over the latter half of 2019 with several new members joining the build team. However, the advent of the COVID 19 pandemic and the social distancing rules that came with it has stopped both rowing and building. The plans of a 2nd launch by end of 2020 have been thrown out the window but we have learnt that building a skiff is very much an organic process, one that often disregards schedules. While it is important to keep the impetus of a build going by having regular build sessions, it is equally as important to enjoy the process of the build and the social engagement that is such an intrinsic part of the endeavour.
Open the link below to a great video by Alex Storer of AWS Productions which aptly provides you with some of our members’ views and feelings about the Club:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIislxHIO5Y
Current Goals:
Promote the health and well-being benefits of rowing, including from a stroke awareness perspective by continuing to promote the F.A.S.T. message.
Recruit new members to participate in building & rowing skiffs.
Build and launch our second skiff in 2021.
Promote St Ayles Skiff building & rowing in the South West and beyond.
We welcome any individuals or groups who wish to participate in the construction and rowing of skiffs.
Contacts:
- Patrick Groot, 0400 359 681, warrnamboolstaylesskiffclub@gmail.com
Links:
https://www.facebook.com/st.aylesskiffwarrnambool/
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