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Club News

Naming ceremony for the new Whitstable Yacht Club Committee Boat

Posted: Tuesday, 07 April, 2015

The official naming of our new Committee Boat 'Slotty' is taking place at twelve noon on Saturday 18 April at the Club. Friends and members of Whitstable Yacht Club are invited along to see the new boat and take part in the ceremony.
The naming will be done by Matilda Dawes, great granddaughter of the late 'Slotty' Dawes, and the boat will be blessed by the Reverend Rachel Webbley, vicar of St Alphege Church. For a brief history of Slotty Dawes at Whitstable Yacht Club, click on the link.

Ian Wild remembers Slotty (short for Lancelot):

“I am delighted he is being remembered. He had a huge influence on me and my sailing generation. He was our most distinguished sailor and largely responsible for Whitstable’s development as an international dinghy centre in the 50s and 60s. My earliest recollections of sailing as a small boy are crewing with my father on his 18ft National ‘Spindrift’.  The boat was named after the horse he had ridden in the Grand National.

When the Flying Dutchman was chosen in 1957 to replace the Sharpie at the Rome Olympics he imported the first boat from Holland and a small fleet gradually built at Whitstable. Because there were so few in the UK, Whitstable became the place to sail if you wanted to race.

Initially my father, Ken, crewed for him. Slotty became President of the International Flying Dutchman Association and my father the UK Secretary.

Whitstable had already established a reputation for dinghy racing. The first 18ft National Championships had been held in 1950 and the Club regularly hosted ‘Kent Week’. In 1958 the first FD National Championships were held. However, 1959 was arguably the pinnacle of the Club’s success as not only did we host ‘Kent Week’, the FD Nationals but also the Merlin Rocket Nationals and most important of all, the FD World Championships and FD Week. The FD Worlds were a rehearsal for the Rome Olympics and attracted Olympic sailors from not only Europe but South Africa and, for the first time, from Russia and other Iron Curtain countries.

Slotty went on to sail in the Rome Olympics where he finished 7th. He actually won the second race. At 56 he was one of the oldest competitors. Keith Musto and Rodney Pattison who sailed FDs in later Olympics both have fond memories of him and racing at Whitstable.

Having established an international reputation, Whitstable went on to host the Finn Gold Cup and Prince of Wales Cup – two of the most prestigious dinghy events in the world.
Slotty was the son of Sandy Dawes of Mount Ephraim, one of the Club’s first members. Slotty was a wealthy man who had made his money from shipping. Looking back I remember him as one of the last of the ruling classes. He wasn’t a committee man and didn’t suffer fools. He certainly wasn’t ostentatious but, when the Club ran out of parking spaces for the growing fleet of FDs, he went out and bought the old Hoy Yard (now part of Keam’s Yard Car Park) which he then let to the Club. When one of the days was blown off during a championship he invited the entire fleet back to his house at Pluckley where he entertained them for the day. He was a bit of an inventor and made many of the fittings for his boats himself. I particularly remember a wheel and pulley system he invented to get over having a long tiller and extension on his Dutchman (UJs hadn’t been invented then!).”

He remained Honorary President of the Club until he died in 1985