After an amazingly successful publicity drive via social media (25,000 responses on Facebook!) and local press for this year’s event, MSC was pleased to host around 100 families and other visitors to their Open Day on Saturday 21st May as part of the RYA’s “Push The Boat Out” event.
It was all hands on deck as guests received a warm welcome from club members who gave tours of the club’s facilities and arranged joyrides on the beautiful River Blackwater. Rear Commodore Graham Cross was in charge of proceedings and laid on a fleet of boats for guests to try, from wayfarers to twin trapeze racing catamarans and yachts. MSC’s active windsurfers were also on hand to demonstrate their skills. Plus a beautiful sailing mosaic was created by children for the clubhouse in the Art Generation tent as a memento of the special day. Publicity Secretary Christopher Kirby commented “The Open Day has provided us with a real opportunity to showcase the very best that our club has to offer and we were so pleased that we were able to welcome so many guests on a day when the forecast was not looking particularly favourable.”
As well as the eclectic spectacle of barbershop quartet “Reunion” performing amongst the boats on the hard, it was an opportunity for MSC to formally name their newly acquired rowing gig “Elettra” aided by a recently successful Sport England grant. The gig was christened with champagne in honour of Princess Elettra Marconi Giovanelli, the daughter of Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of wireless to whom Marconi Sailing Club owes it’s very existence.