On Saturday 12th June we were joined by Margaret Plane from Sailability and nine hearing impaired individuals to enjoy a day on Club members boats. This was the second time that the Club had been host to deaf individuals via Sailability for a day out on the water.

The idea was to go out and watch the last day of the Mumm 30 European regatta.

Sadly there was not much wind and only one of the two races was run.

Margaret Plane from Sailability was there to organise us all and each person was allocated to a boat. On Rin Jinn we had Joe Treverton who is very competent having string of RYA qualifications and Peter Rowlands who had only been sailing for a couple of weekends and that was in a force 9, a slight contrast to the windlass day he was now enjoying! Martin Hoar took 4 of the others out on Harmony including Mike Aston and his wife Mags who do a lot of work organising sailing for deaf people. Hamish Spence, who had never been on a boat before, went out with David Mead on his RIB and the rest were with Mike Grice on his Swordfish.

Having enjoyed a coffee on the way to the race area we motored around passing the Mumms and the other hangers on. As we passed Harmony there was a lot of sign language passing between the two boats. It seemed so much more civilised than shouting at one another!

Both our crew were able to lip read so we had to make sure we were looking at them when speaking and we learnt quite a bit how deaf people communicate.

The race started at last with a very close line up at the start and we had to motor quite hard to get to the windward mark before the first Mumm rounded it. The spinnakers went up and it was a beautiful sight to see them all sailing down to the leeward mark.

The race was soon over after a short beat to the finish line. We then decided to go for a sail as the wind had filled in a bit and Joe enjoyed taking the helm sailing down to Lee on the Solent. On the way back Jon sailed Rin Jinn and learnt how to read the tell tales. Some of the others motored up to Southampton docks to take a look at the QM2. It was then time to join up at the Club for a drink. They all seem to have enjoyed their day afloat with the Club.