Chris Bentley
Hello all fellow Sonatas. I am just wondering if anyone will read this soon, or at all, because the post before this one is dated 2015. Lets see.
You might remember me. I was your Chairman for four years before Joe and I have just returned to the fray after a wee rest of 3 years with BFG by doing the RTI and the Poole Nationals. We are about to do the Southerns, too. I have to admit, Sonatas are still a passion and I have enjoyed meeting all you new folk who have bought into the class since I last sailed and renewing old friendships with those whom we have done battle with in past years. Didn’t much enjoy getting thrashed on the racecourse by strangers, but thats my fault for not keeping up practising. It is really great to see so many boats out with a lot of young crew, especially as they are a bit good at it. And well done Poole for organising such a brill and professional event. I have done a few regattas in my time and that one counts as one of the very best. Hats off, Poole, Joe, the team, the sponsors and especially hats off to the Sonata Class who, as I have always said, not only provide the best bangs for buck of any class I can think of anywhere in the world, they do it with style and at a very high level of racing. Long may it continue and prosper.
However, to the topic of this post. I always tried hard to communicate with the Class when I was in charge. You can find a mass of posts and stories from me buried in this site. We now have the Facebook page too and mini websites like the Nationals one pop up and very quick and useful they are too. But this site, and a very good one it is too, thanks, Jack, should be more used in my humble opinion. Thats up to you guys. No input, no communication. How can we make it that you all scan Sonata.org.uk much more regularly and use it more? How can we make it like your online banking/Facebook which you look at every day? (week? you do look regularly, don’t you) ?
Suggestions please. To start something off, I have separately posted a couple of new topics here. Please join in the discussion, I don’t want to end up a lonely old pensioner talking to himself!
Chris
Peter Booth
Hi Chris,
good to see you back taking an active part in Sonata activities. In the west of Scotland we have a Facebook page called West coast snottas as the national Sonata web site wasn’t getting much response as you are now finding. I will highlight your activity on Facebook to see if that promotes the necessary response.
Regards
Peter Booth
Mark Taylor
For the day to day stuff about who is doing what, who is going to which events then Facebook works better than most other media and the West Coast Snottas page has been great…….even if my boat has done more races without me than with me this year!
Having either a UK Snotta page or one for Poole, one for the Medway that we could all follow might be the way forward……..keeping links to sonata.org.uk for the formal stuff (eg rules)
Mark
Saraband 8314N
Chris Bentley
OK, I have only given it about 10 days since I posted. According to the website, on all my posts, there are three more posts from me, up to ten views, no replies, including this one, headlined, as you see, Hello, Hello. Me, not that fussed if you don’t want to talk to me, prefer you did, but up to you. Me, I am seriously trying to communicate with you lot. If I don’t get any response, I will poke you via emails. I understand that Sonata matters are probably way down your personal priorities list, currently, as of this hour at midnight Saturday, I am working out the logistics of getting BFG lifted in Poole Wednesday and re-lauched in Brixham, Thursday, for the Southerns. Looks good so far. Concurrently I am running a business that demands 24/7/365 attention. If I can take the time and effort to post this at midnight, surely some of you out there can have the decency to reply to me. I live in hope.
Chris