Exmouth Sailing Club held A fantastic evening at our annual prize giving recently a lot of fun was had by all – congratulations to all our trophy winners, writes Deborah Tyler.

Along with our club trophies for dinghies and cruiser series throughout 2019, there were two other trophies of note with the presentation of the Patience Cup for Junior of the Year to Ciaran Handforth and the Claret Jug for Volunteer of the Year, which was awarded to Philip Windsor.

With regard to those major trophy awards; The Patience Cup, which goes annually to the Junior of the Year, went to Ciaran [Handforth], who was chosen for the award by the junior racing committee.

Paul Raven, the junior captain said: "Ciaran only joined the club last year and integrated into the junior training squad very quickly as he made efforts to form friendships with the sailors. He turns up early to training and helps the parents with setting up, then, once he has got his own boat ready, he also helps other sailors getting their kit out of the store and set their boats up. He is generally supportive of the other sailors on and off the water, joins in with as many opportunities as he can with enthusiasm. He is polite and a pleasure to coach and have in the squad as a model for others."

As for the Claret Jug which is annually presented to the Volunteer of the Year, awarded to Philip Windsor, the club's membership secretary and handed over by retiring commodore Ted Draper who said: " The claret jug is awarded annually to a club member who the commodore is particularly grateful to for their volunteering contribution. When I first became commodore, I was worried about our membership record management.

"With the help of Mike Coleman, we had moved from a spreadsheet to a database system, and had run renewals OK. I was sure that the system was fit for purpose, but we lacked the skill to use it properly.

"So, I found a volunteer to become membership secretary with the brief of getting to grips with 'WebCollect'.

"In the past two and a half years, the situation has been completely turned around. We now have a full understanding of the system itself, good quality data about members and effective processes operating around the system.

"This has all come about because of diligent hard work, week after week, behind the scenes. For these reasons, I would like to award the claret jug this year to Philip Windsor."