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Welcome to our new Commodore!

Posted: Saturday, 26 March, 2022

Andrew Jackson was voted in as Commodore at the AGM last week. For those who don't know Andy, he's provided the below introduction:

I started sailing age 11 when my family moved to Herne Bay in the early ‘70s – the Bay was still a popular and crowded holiday resort in those days. I raced Mirror 3290 at Herne Bay Sailing Club with my dad (it’s funny how those sail numbers stick!), and as a teenager I progressed to crewing in Hornets and Albacores, with the Hornet being favoured because it had a spinnaker and a trapeze; the trapeze was a rare and exotic contraption in those days. I sailed an OK for a bit, and I even did a bit of board sailing on the very first windsurfers when they became available in the UK in the late 1970s.

After a break from sailing, I joined Whitstable Yacht Club in 1997. At the time I was still living in London, where I worked as designer and lecturer, but I was finally drawn back to live by the sea a couple of years later when my family and I moved to Whitstable. I have sailed a wide variety of boats over the years including a Merlin Rocket (capsized a lot), a B14 (capsized even more), an RS600 (don’t ask), and finally splitting my time between a Tasar, which I sail with my wife Yvo, and a Laser. As an academic and design historian, I once published an article on the history of the Mirror dinghy – for those interested it can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/4nnm5a8f.

I have been a Vice-Commodore for the club in the past and was very briefly Commodore in 2016, when I stepped up because the post had become unexpectedly vacant mid-term. Now that I’m semi-retired I have more time to devote to the club, so I have accepted the offer of being Commodore again, hopefully for a full term this time. When I’m not sailing, I can be found banging away on my double bass with my swing band at various music venues around Kent and occasionally at WYC parties.