The club provides boats for its members to sail, so making it ideal for those who don't have a boat.
The HSC offers an alternative to sailing for the winter months. The HSC is a registered local group of the Youth Hostels Association and organises a program of rambling weekends over the Winter, often staying overnight at Youth Hostels. We have some members who go sailing but never go rambling and we have some who go rambling but never go sailing.
One of the main sailing activities of the HSC is dinghy cruising, a branch of sailing which few other clubs support.
Our sailing base, currently at Paglesham on the river Roach in Essex, was chosen to be within weekend travelling distance of a fair wedge of the UK population. It is not more than two hours drive from pretty well anywhere in London or the Home Counties. For members living in London it is almost the nearest saltwater - only the lower reaches of the River Thames or possibly the Medway would be nearer.
For directions to find Paglesham by road or rail click here
The boats owned by the HSC are two Wayfarer sailing dinghies. The picture at the top of this page shows these boats getting ready to sail. To see a few more pictures of our club boats click here. To read more about the design and history of the Wayfarer sailing dinghy click here. Both our Wayfarer dinghies are old and much used. They lack show room gloss but we keep them seaworthy with attention to essential equipment such as bouyancy, ground tackle, sails and rigging. Almost all the maintenance of these boats is done voluntarily by club members.
Our two boats are kept on moorings throughout the summer months so that members can go sailing without struggling with launching trolleys. At present we are using moorings where the boats are afloat for rather more than half the time but at low tide they dry out on the mud. It is possible to go sailing at pretty well any tide state if you don't mind paddling in the mud - only the top two inches is soft - in most places anyway! When the tide is in we launch our small tender and row out to the Wayfarers. When the tide is out we walk across the mud to the boats then slide them down the mud into the water - this is easier than you might think since the mud is smooth and it is downhill - once you get the boat moving it will sledge down to the water. If you return at low water it can be a struggle dragging the boat uphill to the mooring but this can usually be avoided by taking the tide into account when forming your plan for the day.
Our local waters for day sailing are the rivers Roach and Crouch and around the small creeks and islands which separate Foulness Island from the rest of Essex. Our most popular day sail is to Burnham-on-Crouch and back. This would include stopping for lunch at Burnham-on-Crouch which is an attractive small town and a very busy sailing center in the summer. Click here for some pictures of Burnham on Crouch. Two other interesting and shorter day sails are to circumnavigate Potton Island or to sail up to the head of the River Roach. Further options are a trip to land on Foulness Island and to take a short walk to the pub and village in the centre of the island. Or if the tide is right you can do a long trip to the upper reaches of the Crouch above Burnham. Another possibility is to sail down the Crouch and out to sea to view the colony of seals basking on Foulness sands at low water. For some information about Foulness island (which is a military establishment) see this webpage about the island
For an easy weekend dinghy cruise we quite often sail from Paglesham to Riverside Campsite at Wallasea, then back on the Sunday, probably stopping at Burnham for a break or a meal. If this is the plan then it makes sense to drive round to the campsite first and put the tents up, then you don't have to transfer them to and from the boat. Alternatively, given reasonable weather, you can head out to sea and sail to another river system. The possibilities include the Blackwater and Colne to the North and the Medway to the South. The Medway is a long way for a weekend sail but it has been done occasionally.
Cruises for longer than a weekend are planned according to demand from members. Usually we have a single one-week cruise in mid summer. Sometimes this has been extended by leaving the boats on some distant moorings then returning them to Paglesham another weekend. More and/or longer cruises would be possible, entirely depending on what members want to do with the boats. Our one-week cruises have taken us as far as Aldburgh in the North and the upper reaches of the Medway in the South.
Typically we have three boats sailing in company on a cruise, the two club boats plus at least one privately owned boat and about eight persons in the total crew. Three persons and their luggage are the practical maximum for a Wayfarer on a cruise of one-week duration. For overnight stops the Wayfarer crews have to camp onshore. This does limit the possibilities for overnight stops, one has to think about where one is likely to find somewhere to put up a few small tents. We have found many farmers will permit camping alongside the sea walls and we know of a couple of marina operators who allow us to camp on their land and make use of the facilities.
To read more about the delights and difficulties of long distance dinghy cruising click here
Sometimes members camp overnight while day sailing from Paglesham or doing maintenance work on the boats. We usually use the well equiped campsite at 'Riverside', Wallasea Island. You will see signs to this campsite as you approach Paglesham by road.
We have a committee member who acts as 'Crewing Agent' to coordinate use of the club boats. Phone the Crewing Agent to let him/her know when you are thinking of going sailing and the crewing agent will then tell you who else is interested in sailing that day. Provided there are at least two people interested then they can contact each other to arrange lifts, exact time to rendezvous at Paglesham etc. I might also add that the internet is increasingly used to coordinate our sailing activities and we now have a private egroup for this purpose.
If you visit us at Paglesham please don't expect to find a proper clubhouse like most sailing clubs have. Until a few years ago we did have a small clubhouse in the form of a cosy wooden shed. Click here to see pictures of this shed. This was rather a nice shed, especially as a place for a hot drink after sailing, now we save money by managing without it. There is always the Plough and Sail Pub' instead. We do have a walk-in locker in the Paglesham boatyard and we use this to store lifejackets and various items of boat gear. The lack of a clubhouse does not prevent us from having social events from time to time - we hire the Paglesham village hall roughly twice each year and we useually hold a summer barbecue at a member's house or at the 'Riverside' campsite at Wallasea near Paglesham.
Our sailing season is from soon after Easter until late October. A program of country walking and youth hostelling is available during the rest of the year. Each winter we have about three weekends staying at youth hostels and sightseeing/country walking, one of these weekends also including our annual general meeting. In recent years we have generally had a day walk on New Year's Day. We also have occasional theatre visits and other social events which can be at any time of year. Basically, anything that would be of interest to a substantial part of our membership can be arranged. Click here for more information about our hostelling activities.
Most yacht clubs have a club burgee. Ours is as shown at the head of each of these pages. The green triangle is from the Youth Hostels Association. The general design has some similarity to the burgee of the Dinghy Cruising Association. This is not coincidental, Eric Coleman was involved in the foundation of both groups some fifty years ago. The Dinghy Cruising Association has a white triangle on a blue and yellow background. I have an idea that this is supposed to represent a boat tent midway between the beach and the sea.
We do have some rules for the use of our club boats. To see all the rules in detail click here. For reasons to do with insurance and common sense we require that the crew of each boat includes at least one experienced member. By 'experienced member' we mean one who has passed a simple test organised by the club, we have a 'training officer' appointed to carry out these tests. The test requires competence in sailing a Wayfarer plus some knowledge of the local waters. We do not require any formal RYA qualifications.
Our club newsletter, titled 'Ahoy' has been running about as long as the club itself. The newsletter is distributed to all our full and associate members appoximately three times each year. Inevitably there is some overlap between the content of the newsletter and that of this website, but not a complete overlap.
The club is run by a committee comprising a chairperson, secretary and treasurer together with a few others. The club consitution requires the chairperson, secretary and treasurer to stand down after three years - not just to stand for re-election as most club constitutions require. This system has worked well, it avoids people feeling obliged to carry on with these jobs for years on end and it encourages new members to join the committee and take a part in running the club as quickly as possible. Since it is a small club and has no premises the workload of administration is light and in recent years two committee meetings together with an AGM each year have been sufficient to coordinate our plans.