Commodores trip to to Christchurch Sailing Club, Dorset, England

Visit to Christchurch Sailing Club, Dorset England

One of the highlights of our recent trip to Europe and England was our visit to the Christchurch Sailing Club in Dorset.

The club is situated on a estuary(not to dissimilar to our own) on the South Coast on England about 40ks from Southampton.We had previously made contact with the club prior to our departure from NZ and was invited to join the Commodore Philip Whiston and Ted & Pauline Varey for lunch at the club on an overcast Sunday in July.We thoroughly enjoyed their hospitality and were introduced to a number of their members.As the weekend was the start of the official school holidays there was no sailing scheduled for the weekend but it enabled me to have a good look around the club and yachts.

See photos attached.

The club membership is considerable larger than ours and caters for Keelers and Dinghies and has around 1000 members.It has a kitchen run independently of the club serving good lunchtime meals and snacks during the day.The bar is run by the club on a voluntary basis.

The sailing dinghies included Finns,Oks,Lasers,Optis and a number of English class yachts.The location of the club is in a very beautiful setting with the river Avon flowing by the club into the estuary.They also have a sea bar which cannot be crossed at low tide by keel boats so there are a lot of similarities to our own club.

Ted and Pauline Varey were wonderful hosts and spent Monday showing us around the sites of their beautiful town of Christchurch,the New Forest and Lymington(another major yachting location)

Richard Ineson