University Sailing Club alumni reunite in Tynemouth to celebrate 50 years since last racing together
13 former members of Newcastle University Sailing Club returned to the North East recently to mark 50 years since they raced together. The group celebrated at The Grand in Tynemouth and even held a ‘friendly’ team race against current students on Derwent Reservoir!
20 May 2022
13 former members of Newcastle University Sailing Club returned to the North East recently to mark 50 years since they raced together. The group celebrated at The Grand in Tynemouth and even held a ‘friendly’ team race against current students on Derwent Reservoir!
Over the decades, the group has regularly held small reunion events in the North East. For this special reunion, they were joined by three former team captains and old friends from as far away as Canada, Kenya and Norway. We spoke to John Driscoll to find out more about the 50th anniversary reunion festivities, and to hear what life was like as a Newcastle student in the 1970s.
A 9000-mile round trip to reunite by the coast
Wow - what a weekend. We travelled from as far afield as Vancouver, Nairobi, Oslo and even Blyth to reach Tynemouth one Friday evening in May. We were joined by some ‘first-timers’, who hadn’t been able to make our previous reunions: Tor Møinichen came from Oslo, Chris Mothersele from Calgary, but winning the furthest-travelled award was Sandy McVey with his 9,000-mile round trip from Vancouver!
We spent Friday evening at The Grand Hotel catching up over a splendid dinner and plenty of wine. Rod Goulsbra surprised us all by presenting engraved cut-glass tumblers to those who had attended the most reunions over the years. Rod and Alan Dunkley have been to all 10 reunions, with Sue Miller and Dave Wheldon only missing one each over the past five decades.
A yard of ale made an appearance at one point, and the stories and memories continued to flow into the early hours. In true Captain fashion, Simon Woods (Captain 70-71) and Rod (Captain 71-72) were last men standing at about 2am!
A ‘friendly’ competition against the current NUSC cohort
The following day saw many of us out at Derwent Reservoir after walking down memory lane round Tynemouth Sailing Club. We were joined by Alistair, Elinor, Issy, Simon and Grace from the current NUSC team on the water, and they rigged Firefly dinghies for some informal team racing.
We even managed to match professions and had a crew of architects, with first-year Architecture student Issy joining forces with veteran Woodsy! With the wind gusting to F5 and rain on the way, others watched from the shore and clubhouse.
The plan was for two-boat team racing, so the last boat's team loses. The issue arose when it came to the end of the three races and we realised we weren’t sure what the teams were – alumni vs students, or red vs blues? The result was tactfully agreed as a draw by our panel of judges and we all headed to the changing rooms to get out of our wetsuits – a 30-minute battle!
While at Derwent Reservoir, we managed to re-enact the team photo from the 1971 British Universities Sailing Association (BUSA) Team Championships at Grafham Water (Cambridge University) – leaving a space where Terry Hudson (RIP) would be. Richard Schooling even wore his original hat!
Pictured (L-R): Sandy McVey, Richard Schooling, Terry Hudson, Rod Goulsbra, Dave Wheldon and John Driscoll (front) at the 1971 British Universities Sailing Association (BUSA) Team Championships at Grafham Water (Cambridge University).
Sent to sea (via the Rum Shack!)
On the final day of our reunion, we had planned to visit Royal Northumberland Yacht Club. Beginning our day with Amaretto coffees at the Rum Shack, we were allocated to boats and sent to sea with all sorts of tasks to accomplish – whilst racing! These challenges included blindfolding our helmsman for a leg, sailing one leg without foresail and – because it was 1 May – flying a message of nine letters or fewer using signal flags including M A Y. This took the longest time to prepare out of all the challenges; in the end, we went with MAYBEKNOT.
Memories from University of Newcastle Sailing Club
Every university fresher is faced with a huge choice of clubs and societies to join. For many of us, life at Newcastle was influenced by the Sailing Club as well as our academic work and the busy social scene. Based at Tynemouth in the autumn and summer terms, and upstream at Ryton over the cold winter months, the Sailing Club welcomed novice and expert dinghy sailors alike.
The club had a fleet of Enterprise dinghies and made use of the facilities of Tynemouth Sailing Club for sessions in the harbour. Beach launching and recovery of the heavy displacement rescue boat had to be a real team effort. Team racing was (and still is) a feature of the calendar, with home and away league matches against other Northern universities.
During our time with UNSC, in 1971/72, we had our fair share of laughs. There was the time one crew had to be rescued at Tynemouth and it made the local news. And then there was the time we did the rescuing, helping the university rowing team after they holed their boat and sank during training at Ryton.
We represented the University in many competitions, including the Southport 24-hour Race, RYA/Dunhill Team Championship and, of course, the British Universities Sailing Championships.
Some of us were quite friendly with the Norwegian naval architects on campus and attended many parties with them (and ate lots of brown cheese!). The Tuesday night discos in the Bun Room and attending lots of gigs at City Hall and the Students’ Union were also highlights.
For some of us, that first degree at Newcastle shaped our future careers. For others, it was to prove utterly irrelevant. Equally, for some, Newcastle was our only university, whilst more than half of us went on to further study in the UK, Australia, South Africa or USA. Away from our studies, the most significant aspect of student life was meeting and making new friends from many different backgrounds.
