Naomhoga Chorcai offer rowing outings on Tuesdays and Fridays at 0945 to 12:30. These outings are lead by Alan Macnamidhe and Jack OKeeffe
The choice of days are to coordinate with the early Tuesday row to allow boats to be left afloat at SBC and to facilitate those who are at work 4 days from Monday to Thursday. The choice of time is to reflect the traffic pattern and the times when parents need to deliver and collect children from school or creche.
The default venue for Friday is Paddys point, but if conditions are not ideal we may operate from SBC; the venue is announced at latest the evening before, on a WhatsApp group. Members can join the group at
https://chat.whatsapp.com/DDvak5lsXIk4spDpio13ny
The MMR outings are planned in advance in terms of the passage plan and the distribution of crew. The passage plan is intended to include a coffee break ashore as the row is a social exercise. Distribution of crew in advance allows the strengths and limitation of individuals to be taken into account, and even give gaelgeori a chance to be ag caint, so participants are asked to enlist the day before using the whatsapp group. Not on WhatsApp?.... no bother, send an SMS to Jack at 087 266 3588.
The crew list issued on WhatsApp includes weather, tide, Dam discharge data and commercial traffic as relevant as well as a basic passage plan. This is to be inline with good practice and recent repeated calls from the Coast Guard that every recreational boat activity be planned in advance. The Coast Guard concern arises from avoidable casualties investigated by the MCIB.
Because the WhatsApp group is key to the operation of the sessions - posts to the group are controlled to protect the group from spam, such as seasonal greetings, jokes, news links and from messages that should have been sent person to person. These are controlled to minimise traffic and to keep the group in focus, our experience is that if the group gets infested by spam members will not pay attention to it.
We also exclude posts that are not directly inked or limited to the MMR scope, such as impropmtu rows, navigational information - these posts are of interest to the entire NC membership, and if posted on the MMR which consists of only 69 of the club members, then the post content is denied to every other club member. This misuse of a focus group can give rise to cliques in the past, and is contrary to the practice of inclusivity. The correct channel for such information is the NC forum, and as amendments and updates may be required the information should be in one primary channel.
If your post is judged "out of bounds" you will be asked to remove it. Don't worry - if you fail to remove or justify it we admins will generously remove it for you - at no cost.
We have a lot of nice times at our MMRs on the water and out of trouble. Long may it continue.
Agreed, long may the good times roll on the mid morning row. However unilateral cutting people off without warning goes above and beyond even a club sanction at the end of an official complaints procedure!!! If it's taking time for this new forum to bed in and gain traction amongst members we want to work collaboratively to ensure that we work together as a club. I am encouraged to hear you talking about avoiding cliques and encouraging inclusivity, I may suggest that unilateral cutting people off was ill judged in this regard.
If people have any suggestions on how to improve this forums usability or ways to help it gain extra traction please send your feedback to a committee member or email the club your thoughts.
