Newsletter October 2000

This is the second of the Bosporos Boat Club newsletters and there is plenty to report on. The summer has seen the consolidation of our new club and some important happenings. Before looking at those, the congratulations of all members of Bosporos Boat Club must go to our Dark Blue Olympic Gold medallists from Sydney 2000, Matthew Pinsent, Tim Foster, Luka Grubor and Andrew Lindsay. Absolutely sensational stuff, I am sure you will agree, and the memories are likely to stay with us for a long while.

Membership
We now have almost 100 members, half of whom are Associates members. This represents about one fifth of the total number of Old Blues and Isis out there (there are no reliable figures for old OUWBC Blues and Osiris) so there are still plenty of stragglers out there to join! Several people have asked what they will get out of membership for their money. My reply would be that, quite apart from having a new club to cheer for at Henley, members are now a part of an organisation that exists to support the current OUBC and OUWBC and to ensure that we continue to win boat races long into the future and which is there to nurture and organise contact and support between the old blues network.

Of course, the rowing side of the club is also a very important part of it. 6 current Bosporos members were approached in October and asked if they would be willing to become Life members for a one-off donation of £1,500. This was done in order to provide the club with funds to buy vital rowing equipment (see Rowing below) in order to enable it to become competitive on the water. I am pleased to report that those 6 people, Tony Ward, Tom Anderson, Rob Clegg, Roger Hirst, Andrew Gordon-Brown and Pete Bridge, all agreed to do this and as a result, the club had been able to purchase equipment from the OUBC.

Rowing
The rowing group has got off the ground over the summer and we are starting to train seriously through the winter in preparation for the heads season and summer racing in 2001. The squad currently has about 16 men's rowers in it but sadly as yet no female rowers. As mentioned above, the club has purchased an Aylings AX2 coxless four from OUBC as well as four blades and the rowing group is starting to make good use of these boats. The 1996 Oxford Empacher eight has also been bought and this is to be delivered by OUBC in February 2001 in time for the Head of the River race. Many thanks must go to OUBC for assisting the club with some very competitive prices and payment terms for this equipment and indeed the very generous gift of a Sims coxed four and eight blades to round out our equipment.

Social
The drinks party at Henley Royal Regatta was a huge success with some 150 to 200 people turning up at stage during the evening. Many thanks again to Mary Mason for all her hard work. This will be repeated at each Regatta in the future. The next social event for the club will be a dinner on Trial Eights day in early December, date, time and venue to be confirmed. Details of this will be sent to you and will be posted on the website.

AGM
The club held its AGM in early July and minutes of that have been posted on the website. It was decided that a better time to hold the AGM would be in the autumn in London so the next AGM will be in October of next year.

Photographs
We are still looking for photos of crews for the website. It would be great to build up an online archive so if you do have old boat race photos, send them to me and I will arrange for them to be scanned in.

Direct Debit and Gift Aid forms
I have recently sent out reminders about the forms that are missing and many thanks to those who have responded. To clear up any confusion, the standing order forms are for subscriptions from the year March 2001 onwards (all subs for this year have now been paid) and are merely to make everyone's lives easier. The Gift Aid forms will also allow us (and most likely you) to reclaim tax and thereby increase the funds available to us. As it stands currently (and not including the tax rebates due from the 6 life membership donations), the tax we could recover if all of you who have not yet returned your Gift Aid forms returned them amounts to almost £1,500, a not inconsiderable sum! Therefore, please could I ask you to fill these forms in and return them to me at 9b Cromford Road, London SW18 1NZ.