Dear Members,

Those of you that attended the Annual General Meeting of the Club last Saturday would be well aware that the meeting unanimously accepted a nomination for life membership that had been recently put to and accepted by the Club Board.

I am very pleased to announce that the Life Membership was award to Phil West, the current Club Commodore.

Phil, or more commonly “Westy”, as most around our Club and  in fact most of the major sailing Clubs in Australia refer to him, joined Middle Harbour 16’s at the age of 16 and without giving his age away that was about 40 years ago! Clearly showing his an early interest in the place he first sat on the Board a year later at the age of 17 after lying about his age as you had to be over 18 to hold a Board position. Since then Westy has held every available position within the Club except strangely enough was never asked to be Treasurer (there has to be something behind that)!

In his 40 years of membership Phil has sailed everything the Club has had to offer and when the time came to give his own skiff sailing away he took it upon himself, with his great friend Matt Gunton, to reinvigorate the Club’s junior sailing division in about 2000-2001. The effort he put in at that time is still reflected in the success of our junior program today, 17 years later.

Phil West’s contribution to the Middle Harbour 16’ Skiff Club has been invaluable over the years and he continues to be involved at an executive level to this day. The Board is delighted to have been able to award a Life Membership to Westy and we offer him our sincere congratulations on this achievement.

 

Peter Tinworth

President