May 13th 2025 – A Royal Visit from Princess Anne
A date we won’t forget and possibly one of the highlights of our clubs history. In 2024 and knowing that the clubs 150th year was approaching we applied for a Royal visit to help us mark the year, Princess Anne is the patron of the RYA so who better, not really expecting to get one but nothing ventured and all that.
So when we received notification that a visit would happen the committee were naturally very excited. For security reasons we had to keep it under wraps until closer to the day. Then when it was possible to announce the news to the members the excitement built quickly through the club. We’d been told the Princess didn’t want us to make any kind of special arrangements for her, no fuss please. Of course we had to have a tidy up…remove some of the chipped mugs from the kitchen, weed the dinghy yard, a few other jobs on the list, and of course there had to be bunting. Everyone was motivated and by the time we finished the clubhouse and yard looked great. This was term time but every single child who requested a day off to meet the Princess was granted permission (thank you Dorset schools).
At around 1.30pm The Princess arrived with her security detail to be greeted by the pirate children and their leaders, the committee was led by our commodore Ian Clayton, President Lindsay Court, Poole’s Mayor and around 80 other members were also in attendance. She visited the Brownsea room and signed our guest book, taking the time to talk to almost everyone and enjoying a cup of tea and some incredible cake that we had made just for her visit, all whilst admiring our view over Brownsea Island and a planned sail past by our junior pirate sailors. After this she walked down to our pier and talked patiently to every child about their sailing experiences and ambitions, the younger children showed her “Crab City” where the best crabs can be caught from our 283ft pier (this is longest private pier in the harbour). The Princess spent so long talking to everyone that her visit over ran by quite some time before she was waved off, a truly memorable and special day for which we were all very grateful.
