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Grafham Water Sailing Club (United Kingdom)

Club burgee
Flag system

Club Burgee

image by Rob Raeside, 6 June 2011

Grafham Water is an artificial lake or reservoir at Perry near Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire (Great Britain). The club rules state "the name of the Club shall be the Grafham Water Sailing Club and the burgee of the club shall be green over blue, divided by a wavy white band."

Flag System

The sailing club maintains a neat flag system “to control use of the water by members and visitors. (...) Flags are flown from the main jetty and occasionally from other shore side flag poles” as stated on this page: http://www.grafham.org/?page_id=32. A direct link to clickable table, presenting the various signals (captions edited, merged with comments from previous page): http://www.davas.co.uk/gwsc/wp-content/uploads/flags2.JPG.

Green: normal sailing areas.
Yellow: restricted sailing – area 1 only (restricted area bounded by yellow buoys – used routinely on weekdays to ensure you are within sight of the duty coxswain).
Quarterly divided red and white: experienced sailors only – restricted to area 1.
Red: water closed – no sailing allowed.
Blue saltire on green: algae present – wear suitable protection and wash after sailing.
Broad blue diagonal stripes, descending, on white: experienced windsurfers only – water closed to dinghies, catamarans and keelboats. This flag will be flown at the coxswain's discretion in strong wind conditions to indicate that only experienced windsurfers may launch. These are conditions not windy enough to justify closing the lake but too windy for most craft other than windsurfers to cope.
Black: compulsory wearing of wet/dry suits (from 1st Nov to 31st March or when water temperature is below 5 degrees C).

The above signals are an interesting variation on the better known beach signal flags.
Jan Mertens, 20 May 2011