Tonite's the nite...

No it's not the Neil Young song but the club decision about a new two seat glider. The key judgement call to my mind is..."will a new two seat X-country machine help grow membership???". I've heard suggestions that current members should show some committment to the club by providing debentures to help fund any new purchase. Bollocks I say...members need to commit to using any new glider as a base for driving membership. If we purchase a Duo XL then it's probably more about retaining newly solo'ed members by providing X-country training (something we don't do very well) than attracting new people. However more activity around the club usually helps attract new members. We'll see. I have returned from Omarama is record time. 22 hours door to door, and we could have shaved another 2 hours off that as we arrived in Piicton 2 hours too early. The target for the next trip is 20 hours door to door - 1200kms. The Cook Strait Ferry is the major obstacle...5 hours to cross that very short piece of water. Interestingly the Interisland crowd were cheaper than BlueBridge - $405 vs $435 for a car/trailer and 2 passengers. Thats the first time that's happened. From my point of view the Bluebridge is still better as it has more room inside to turn the car and trailer around. The Arahura wasa tight squeeze. Wave in Omarama.