RQYS Mainsheet 2021

Bistro sails

FEATURE

LOOK UP AND WONDER NO MORE Tales of two families overhead … Hiding in plain sight are some fascinating tales behind the collation of seemingly random sail numbers and logos which adorn the trio of sails spanning the RQYS bistro, as creator Bradley Ginnivan of Squadron sponsor Moreton Bay Signs has at last confessed.

Bradley remembers, with clear fondness, that was how he became a sailor at a very young age. “I wasn’t a very good student during the day but after school I’d be straight round to the Club and out on the water.” His first boat was a Sailfish (#3336), which he was racing at eight years old. “They were a bit like the Optis of today except much harder to sail; the class is extinct now, but we had 30–40 of them in Victoria when I was growing up.” Cue the RQYS legacy: when the present bistro area was created in 2012, in the works preceding the relocation of the Squadron’s new building from the Port of Brisbane, Bradley’s brief for the new overhead decor was clear: no ‘tears before bedtime’. “We couldn’t use any actual RQ sail numbers,” he says, with a quiet smile, “as there were too many champions and personalities available to choose, and I had to devise and deliver an installed solution in just six weeks.”

“The numbers are all personal – to my extended family, although there are a few of the Warlows’ as well – and have been key to my never forgetting important birthdays ever again,” says Bradley, by way of cryptic introduction to a gradual ‘unpeeling of the onionskins’ of a topic that has generated many memorable (if sometimes colourfully far-fetched) bar table opinions for just shy of 10 years. And, to further ‘de-chroma’ the mystery, it’s 8:30am on a workday when Bradley is induced to talk us through every one of the 28 emblems: he does so without notes, with only caffeine to lubricate his meticulous recall. “My nautical origins are on the waters of Cairn Curran Reservoir, 10km west of Castlemaine in Victoria where I grew up and went to school,” Bradley explains, “and the sailing club of the same name was founded by my Dad in 1958, who became its first Life Member, and my twin brother Craig is its latest.”

Mainsheet 2021

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