2016 South Coast Championships Regatta, Herne Bay, 3/9/16. Friday Evening Reception

Clubs and individuals should have started to receive invitations to the 2016 South Coast Championships Civic Reception and Championship draw - at the Herne Bay R. C. Clubhouse on Friday, 2nd September, 2016 the evening before the Regatta.

Your Executive Officers just wanted to make you all aware of who should be receiving invitations and why. Herne Bay Rowing Club who are hosting the Regatta on behalf of the Coast Amateur Rowing Association have limited the number of invitations to fifty per Association - and as a result your Executive Officers have been forced to make a decision on who would receive them. 

Our decision was that each affiliated club should receive two invitations, the Associations Executive Officers and their partners, the Hants & Dorset South Coast Council Delegates and their partners and the H&DARA Race Officials at the Championhips and their partners should receive an invitation - and in spite of duplications this still exceeded the fifty tickets we were allocated. Unfortunately this left no tickets for the other Association Life Vice Presidents or representatives from the H&D ARA Championship crews - which is very disappointing. No doubt some will argue that this distribution of tickets is unfair and should have been done differently - but it is in line with the recent practise.

Clubs can of course choose to allocate their two Club invitations to representatives of their Championship crews as can any individual who receives an invitation.

Presumably for most Championship crews representatives it will be the Championship draw they will be most interested in and so - subject to an appropriate signal/Internet connection we will attempt to post the Championship draws on to the H&D Web site - and to our Twitter feed and face book page as soon as we can.

It is disappointing that we are unable to invite the representatives of the Championships but we hope you will understand and accept the decision taken by your Executive Officers in the light of the invitation restrictions.