Rotorua Yacht Club

07/09/2026

It is preaching to the converted to post this here, but anyway, here is Ngongotaha News Page 19. Many thanks to them for publishing this, we need all the help we can get.

04/09/2026

Sept newsletter sent yesterday, if you didn't get it or if you want it, don't hesitate to get in contact.

02/09/2026

Learn to Sail courses start off again in Term 4. With an Open Day prior on October 4th 1pm.

https://www.rotoruayachtclub.com/learn-to-sail.html

26/08/2026

Graffiti, 3,2,1, Gone.
Thanks Robin.

21/08/2026

This (ongoing) story about Zephyrs (aka zimmer-frames) is a nice read and highly relevant to all the recent learnt to sailors and experienced sailors alike.

🤪 I've learnt that my mental health is determined by how high I can point a Zephyr upwind during a club race.
👉 go.livesaildie.com/leadtoliability

Zephyr Sailing Dinghy Association New Zealand
Yachting New Zealand

05/08/2026

August Newsletter

29/07/2026

Life goals...

21/07/2026

International Talk Like a Pirate day is in September! Here is some handy background info.

20/07/2026

Mayday; who knew?

In 1923, a radio officer named Frederick Stanley Mockford at London's Croydon Airport was asked to invent a distress word that couldn't be misheard — something clearer over a crackling radio than "SOS," whose dots and dashes worked in Morse but whose letters hiss and vanish in speech. Most of Croydon's traffic in those days flew to Paris, so Mockford reached for French: m'aider — "help me," from venez m'aider, "come help me."

Spoken with an English tongue, m'aider became MAYDAY. It tested clearly through static, it sounded like nothing else in radio chatter, and by 1927 an international convention had made it the official spoken distress call of the world — always given three times: Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, so a single storm-garbled word can never be mistaken for a casual mention.

A century later, every sailor afloat carries a scrap of borrowed French they hope they'll never need.

📷 Photo: the Marconi wireless room aboard RMS Olympic — public domain (Wikimedia Commons).

12/07/2026

Weekend photos