World Snipe Day by Fleet Macondo at AVB

Bracciano, May 22, 2016

Report by Ivo Gattulli

“A great day of sail, also known as: World Snipe Day“

Few weeks ago I’ve been called by the Sailing-Teams Manager of my Club (the Associazione Velica Bracciano  – AVB – on Lake Bracciano), he told me that they’re organising an open-day, at Club level. They already did the same kind of activity few weeks before, and they realised they needed something to involve not only the kids attending the OD but also the “Parents”..

The solution was quite easy: to get the resident Snipe Fleet Macondo in!!

So last Sunday we hosted this Open Day (for our Fleet the second from last October), 150 persons involved, almost 50/50 kids and adult, in an incredibly glorious day (after a rainy Spring).

…

Starting signal at 10.00AM, we suddenly had the Club literarly overwhelmed by Guests!

We divided all the mass of people in kids and adults, each group managed by three Club’s Coaches (I won one adult’s group), and we began to introduce some basic concepts about sails and sailing, majority of the guests knew nothing about that indeed.

After this first part, and a considerable Lunch-break (as italians Sunday lunch is deal-breaker), the usual day-breeze kicked in on the Lake, so we pushed out all our Guests on different boats, like Laser16s, Meteors, and obviously Snipes.

Together with other guys of our Snipe Fleet, we went out with four snipes (3 boats from the Fleet members and the “social-snipe” of AVB), each Snipe with one sniper and one guest, having care to bring on board little more skilled guests.

I’ve to say it’s been a quite long (and hot) afternoon: we spent something like 4 hours on the water, changing crews from the RIB!. Fortunately the light breeze and flat water made possible to bring people out, showing some basics about the snipe in full safe (just the day before we had 8-9m/sec of Northern breeze and quite choppy water).

From my point of view it’s been yet another opportunity to see quite close the great interest generated from the snipe and the impressive lack of knowledge about the Snipe Class just outside the Snipe Class members. Indeed I brought with me several locals, of different ages, people usually sailing big-boats, wind-surf and kite and no one had just a single clue about Snipe as boat and as Class activity.

When I say (inside the Promotion Committee) that we need as soon as possible (as Class) to start to tell the Snipe outside the Snipe Class it’s just an attempt to address that fundamental issue.

Anyway I’m happy to say that all those efforts have been a success. At the end of the day we involved something-like twenty persons on the Snipe, and I have to confess a little astonishment finding kids happy about the experience but adults quite excited!!

I can’t say which will be the follow up (if any) but I’m receiving comments from the Guests, through the web-site of the Club, and they sounds incredibly positive, particularly about the chance to sail on the Snipe!

What I can’t say for sure is that this is a kind of activity in which our Class should be involved as frequent as possible, so let me thanks the AVB for the great chance and all our guys from Snipe Fleet Macondo for the excited availability and the efforts.

Ivo Gattulli

 

SCIRA Promotion Committee warmly encourages fleets in all countries to organize World Snipe Days, in the best time of year for such activities in each region.

The aim is to attract new people to our class by helping them discover our wonderful boat.

We are convinced that, with the commitment of passionate Snipe sailors of each fleet, it is possible to re-launch and give new vigor to our Class in each region, even guaranteeing a generational change.

We believe that communication to the outside and the promotional activities of individual fleets is a fundamental aspect for this effort.

The first step is to introduce and allow potentially interested sailors to sail the Snipe.

Then we will be happy to publish on SnipeToday and on the Bulletin your World Snipe Day’s report. It is important for us and for the other fleets share your experiences and receive suggestions and comments about this promotional activities.

Here some guidelines and suggestions