The WBA Christmas event happened in December at the Albert Park Yacht Club. Any other year it would be unsurprising that a Christmas lunch should happen but 2020 was a very different year and even the normal seemed a challenge. It was a testament to the persistence of the committee to come up with a COVID safe plan to make things achievable.
With 2020 there had been few WBA events but we had snuck in a couple of memorable ones around the Victorian 121 days of lockdown, particularly the Werribee and Maribyrnong Rivers days out and a couple of APYC sailing days in the early part of the year. The club nights were ZOOM meetings and were well attended and I know from a personal view were a welcome diversion in the deep days of lockdown. Thank you to Peter Bachelor for organising this together with getting “Shavings” out. Also, of note we had the in between publication of “Sawdust”, thanks to Penny and of course the contributors.
Some of the club boats were launched but, I think there was great interest in just talking with others about boats.
The Christmas lunch was a really nice mixed roast and from all accounts was well received. Thank you to the committee member servers everything went without problems. Unfortunately, the President and Sue couldn’t make it to the event but we wish Chris good health and we will see him this year.
Because of the lack of happenings, the annual awards were ‘held over’ until this year [2021] so the presentation part of the lunch was very short.
It was very good to meet up with WBA members again after the difficulties of the year and hope to see everyone at the future events.
Andrew Campbell