Swanage SRC celebrates new Cornish Gig
Swanage Sea Rowing Club launched its new Cornish Pilot Gig on Saturday (April 14th), with a traditional blessing and naming ceremony.
The new Gig, Winspit, took 12 weeks to complete after a mammoth fund-raising drive by the club and a grant from the Landfill Communities Fund.
It’s name ‘Winspit’ – a local historical cliff quarry on the Purbeck coast – was chosen after a competition held amongst local schoolchildren to find a name to complement the existing wooden gigs ‘Old Harry’ and ‘Peveril’, and the GRP training gig ‘Dancing Ledge’, all named after local landmarks.
The gig was pulled through Swanage with the assistance of the town crier, before being officially named by Jonathan Fryett of Canford Environmental Ltd and Dee Barron of Swanage SRC.
After a traditional blessing by Canon John Wood, a crew of junior and youth rowers then crewed Winspit on her inaugural row in a cold and blustery Swanage Bay.
Further funding for the project allowed six disadvantaged young people from the Swanage area to attend an oar-building course at Lyme Regis’s Boat Building Academy. The new oars will be used to train Swanage’s junior rowers.
‘The Club has had a very positive year,’ said Swanage SRC Chair Martin Steeden. ‘The members and Trustees have all worked hard to develop the Club but there is still a lot to do, including fund-raising for a new Gig shed to allow the Club to continue to improve its facilities and get more people involved in sea rowing. The effort has been well worth it, and Winspit will be a real benefit to the Club.’
For more information about Swanage SRC, who have recently become Explore Rowing accredited, visit www.ssrc.org.uk.
