David McClean – 2006

David McClean’s nomination for Life Membership was made at the AGM held 12th July, 2006 by Ron Burwood and seconded by Chris Lowe. “In support of the motion, Ron Burwood outlined the enormous contribution, above and beyond the call of duty, David has made to the Club as it Training Officer. The days and nights in giving of his time to train the hundreds of youngsters and adults who have gone through the Club’s training programme throughout the years he has been at the helm. Chris Lowe also spoke in support of the nomination. Motion carried by acclamation.”

Also the nominator mentioned that David has run school holiday camps involving our Junior Heron sailors giving them valuable training and advice which resulted in a closely knit group. He became chef and cooked up barbecues for the trainees and holiday camp students. For a couple of years David organised an introductory water activities course for a group of Year 8 students from the Sydney Adventist College at Strathfield. 

David’s main love, after his sailing, has been the Training Classes and from going through our records he began his involvement by assisting in this area with the advanced sailing programme for the Heron Juniors during the 1997 season. Soon he followed this with involvement in the Nippers programme and during the 1998/99 season David took on the task of Cadet Class Captain, a position which he held for 21 seasons until the 2018/19 season. During this period he has taken great delight in passing on his extensive sailing knowledge to the tyros under his charge.

In the early days David also kept our training fleet in running order by making and repairing rudders and masts for the training fleet but this is now not as onerous for him as we now have a Training Boat Maintenance Officer to organise this side of activities.  Initially he conducted the Training Classes under the then accredited Training Officer, Nick Brown, however for the 2001/02 season David was elected to the position of Training Officer and holds this very important position until the current time..

During the past few years David was one of our members who put a lot of time and energy being involved in the committees which had the responsibility to search for suitable rescue boats on two occasions. In addition to his normal training activities David learned to operate a sailing simulator when we had one on loan at the Club and then devoted many hours after school and in the evenings training other Club members on it. A trainer extraordinaire of sailors, David has the gift of giving praise to trainees’ to make them want to do better and he is well respected by them. David’s presence in these activities make our Club a better place for youngsters, as well as a few more senior youngsters, who are wanting to learn to sail.

David has been nominated for a number of awards but the one for which he received due recognition was the Australian Government Sport Achievement Award and the certificate recognizing this was presented to him by Prime Minister, John Howard, in December, 2006.

For the current 2022/23 season David has decided to retire as one of our Training Officers after some 25 years in this role.