Established 1865
The one-hundred and fifty seventh annual general meeting of Clyde Amateur Rowing Club will be held at 19:30 on 24 October 2022 at WEST on the Green.
Clyde Amateur Rowing Club is a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (SCIO) registered with the Office of the Scottish Charities Regulator (OSCR), number SC050168. Clyde ARC was established in Glasgow, United Kingdom 1865 and incorporated as a SCIO in 2020.
Recognising that the completion of the West Boathouse Renovation Project is expected by the end of 2022, and
Aknowledging that a change in the representation from Clyde on the West Boathouse Management Committee (BMC) at this crucial juncture could be damaging to the project as a who,
we move to
Clyde Amateur Rowing Club exists to enable its members to participate in rowing both for sport and recreation. We aim to make rowing, and access to the River Clyde at the heart of the City of Glasgow, open to all, ranging from complete beginners to elite athletes.
In the last year we’ve seen the Club start to recover from the difficulties posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the assosciated reduction in the Club’s membership and activities. In the 2021/22 our activities were still affected by restrictions on both rowing activity and related events, however, while these posed challenges, and imposed difficulties, the Club rose to them, and has recorded one of the most successful years in its recent history.
The major project which the Club has been focussed on for the last five years, the renovation of the West Boathouse, is nearing completion. Practical completion of building work is expected in the next two weeks, and we anticipate returning to the building at some point in November 2022. This project represents a milestone in the club’s history, and provides a secure future with modern, safe facilities from which to conduct rowing and community engagement activities. Not only does the refurbished boathouse represent a return to our previous facilities, but also a considerable improvement on what we had previously. The internal divide between both halves of the boathouse has been removed, allowing more flexible storage of boats, especially eights. The gyms in both halves of the building will be rationalised to provide dedicated spaces for strength and conditioning activity and ergometer use.
This improvement in facilities comes with a change in conditions; the boathouse no longer being divided means that we will need to learn how to co-habit with our rival club, Clydesdale Amateur Rowing Club, and welcome Strathclyde University Boat Club under our roof. I am confident, especially with the evidence of the last two years at Glasgow Rowing Club, that we will rise to this challenge, and learn not only to make the best of it, but to build strong new relations with these clubs (all while taking the opportunity of course to prove Clyde’s racing pedigree whenever possible).
I look forward to rowing with you all from our new pontoon, which you may have seen in the river already. (I’ve had reports that it may already have becoming a favoured resting spot of the river seal, so I suppose that’s a… seal… of approval). On the issue of rowing with you all, it is reassuring to see the membership start to recover, and we now have a wealth of new members in the club, which is testament to Grant’s efforts in bringing beginners into the sport. This has been no mean feat, working out of a container in the grounds of GRC with limited resources and a skeleton fleet. I am cheered to see the club grow under these circumstances, and the future seems bright once we have access to luxuries such as a kettle to have a warm drink after a winter session!
Grant has also been instrumental in developing our rowers from beginners to racers, and the club has this year not only made entries to various races, and hasn’t come back empty handed. I’m sure Grant will discuss those in detail in his own report, but he can be proud of his achievements as captain in the last year. Racing has also seen us strengthen our ties with our current hosts GRC. We’ve entered composite crews with them, and joined them for training sessions. While we will soon be moving out of their container it is important that we maintain and continue to grow the relationships we’ve built here. GRC have also been extremely accommodating to our activities, and I’d like to extend our thanks once again to their trustees and members. Clyde held two successful days of racing on the Clyde in 2021/22, starting with our annual 3 Heads race in October 2021, which proved extremely successful, as well as being one of the first “normal” races in Scotland after the COVID-19 lockdowns. We also held the perennially popular Power Sprints in May 2022 which has become a firmly cemented part of the Scottish Rowing calendar. My thanks goes to all of our members for pulling together to make both of these events successful, to Glasgow Humane Society for helping us to maintain the safety of the events, and to GRC for allowing us to use their facilities.
While I have mostly positive happenings to report, I must also note that in 2022 we continued to see challenges from the weather. In previous years it has been noted that increased rainfall in the winter has led to challenging conditions for rowing on the Clyde, but in the summer of 2022 we saw an extended period without rain in which boating from steps on the river became increasingly challenging. While these weather events remain relatively infrequent and generally no more than a nuisance, it seems likely that going forward these will continue to stand as problems for the Club.
We have also struggled in the last couple of years to conduct much community engagement. For a club of our size this will always be challenging, but when we return to the boathouse we must make renewed efforts to introduce new people to rowing. Not only is this the right thing to do (I’m sure there are summer days where we’ve all realised there’s nowhere we’d rather be than in a boat on the Clyde [albeit when we’re a little way from the water treatment works…]), but the future stability of the Club will rely on bringing in new members to help us support our new facilities (and after all, the pain of a tough erg piece shared is a pain… well, it’s a pain shared). We were featured on the New Year’s Day special episode of the BBC Scotland Outdoors Podcast and BBC Out of Doors in January, and it would be good to invite them back once we’re back in the boathouse.
Finally, I want to thank again the Trustees; a small group of people do a lot of work in the Club to keep things afloat (both metaphorically, and, sometimes, literally).
While we’re still recovering from two years of COVID, and starting to refocus after years spent on the boathouse project I’m confident looking at the state of the Club today, and the momentum which we leave 2022 with as we head into the new Club year, that Clyde is once again on the rise.
+ Figure head of the club
+ Non-rowing liaisons with other clubs
+ May attend meetings on behalf of the club
+ Can attend hospitality areas at events
+ Coordinating annual returns to OSCR
+ Supporting roles to President
+ Point of contact for other clubs (rowing related)
+ Boat allocation
+ Organising trailering for events
+ Submitting race entries
+ Coaching
+ Setting training programmes
+ Setting crews for races
+ Organising sessions with beginners/novices who need supervision
+ General financial oversight
+ Financial reporting
+ Banking, book keeping and record keeping
+ Point of contact for all financial transactions
+ Sponsorship
+ Coordinating event finances
+ Organising cash float for hosted events
+ Organising and minuting meetings, and setting meeting agendas
+ Point of contact for other clubs (non-rowing related)
+ Communication and correspondence
+ Maintaining email distribution lists in compliance with GDPR
+ Maintaining the register of trustees of the charity
+ Boathouse upkeep and maintenance/repair
+ Boat upkeep and maintenance/repair
+ Promoting safe practice
+ Completing water incident report forms
+ Submitting water safety audit to Scottish Rowing
+ Uphold the policies outlined by Scottish Rowing
+ Social media and web site administration
+ Keeping social media and web site up to date with the latest news and event details
The positions listed in the above section will normally act as trustees of the Charity. You cannot stand for election to one of these positions if:
Details about the duties which are expected of Charity Trustees can be found on the website of the Scottish Charities Regulator, OSCR, here.