We celebrated our 10th year last year…I got involved because I joined the club to learn how to sail and the instructor at the time said that Sailability was starting up here on a Monday, I had Mondays free and I thought "this’ll be good for me, good for everyone" and of course as you have committee meetings and there’s no Secretaries or Presidents wanting to put hands up. I said well I'd do the Treasurer, as I was in the bank for quite some time....I got handed this bag of money after about 6 months of operation and I’ve been the Treasurer ever since.

I used to be a sales rep and on a Monday I had to do calls in the Sandgate area and then I had to see another chap at Clontarf but I couldn’t see him before eleven o clock in the morning as he used to work two jobs. So, if I had a bit of time I’d come down here and find a beautiful spot, I’d find a shady tree and watch the boats sailing past and after a couple of weeks my curiosity got the better of me so I drove up here to see where they came from. There was a sign up for Sailability and I thought "that’s interesting" and they had an article in the paper and I thought "that’s interesting". Then where I was working after the 2011 floods the boss said to me, I’ve got overdrafts I’m going to have to cut back on your hours, so that freed up my Monday so I came down here and been here ever since and love doing it.
I’m not a sailor, I’ve never sailed in my life, how’s that for President of a sailing organisation!

I hadn't sailed for 40yrs and Rooney Walker he was the second president, he saw me one day at some function and said "ah look, you’ve never been back to sailing" and that must’ve been about 2011. I came down about 3 times then and there was no one here! About six months later I ran into him and again and he said "you never ever came back" and I told him I’d been there 3 times and you haven't sailed so I came back down again and that was me.

We borrowed a couple of boats and that to get started and since then its grown, now we’ve got 10 boats and we recently got a loan from Council which is going towards a support boat. We have one of the guys he’s applied for the grants he’s really good at it! We have an average of about 30-35 volunteers just to run the day, we’re all geriatrics except for one or two...officially you’re a geriatric when you’re 60 so there’s doctors appointments, gotta look after grandchildren, stuff like that so we have this pool and only a couple of times we've got short. If we have under 50 people out on the boats, that’d be a quiet day,

It runs like clockwork here, we're amazed at the volunteers. The most important thing in this club and I think it applies to every club is the people. Our volunteers are people who are here to do things for other people, they’re not here for their own glorification or whatever else, they’re here to help and if something happens or if someone’s not here there’s a dozen people there who’ll step up, that’s why it runs like clockwork. Getting people to be in an official capacity is difficult but if we have a working bee twenty people arrive, that’s the sort of people they are very, very good.

One of the aims now is for us to get a flat bottomed boat so we can take wheelchairs straight on without having to use hoists. That would enable us to take people out if we have got pollution problems in the water and it’s a motorboat so we could go up the creek. The people we bring out they’d like to go out with friends sit and enjoy the day and when they go back to their home or school then they can talk about it together what they saw and what they experienced. A lot of people feel uncomfortable in the hoist so that’s the next project on the cards...

Word from the members of the SANDBAG Community Centre