The meeting aboard Balmoral last Saturday was very well attended – the Britannia Lounge was packed -standing room only.

The main points to come out of the meeting were:

• Charitable Status should be received before the end of September
• Over £50,000 has been pledged so far, this will be worth 25% more with Gift Aid
• Lottery Transition Funding to be applied for (up to £100,000)
• Several large organisations being approached for donations
• WSN has agreed ‘in principal’ to bareboat charter Balmoral to the new company
• Ship to be opened to the public (I believe that a catering contractor has been appointed)

There were probably other things, but I wasn’t taking notes.  A newsletter (with the very latest news is due soon) and will be sent to all on the mailing list – if you haven’t signed up, you can do so here. The Balmoral web site (same link) has had a lot of things added to it since I last looked, including several video clips – very interesting – an impressive site!

Everyone at the meeting was asked to provide their contact details and to list any skills they could bring – anything from – taking the minutes at the fortnightly meetings, admin, hosting visitors to the ship, right through to the manual work /welding /engineering of the ‘winter’ volunteers.  If YOU have a skill that you think would be useful and are prepared to volunteer, there is a Volunteer page on the web site – use the link above.

Finally, someone has produced a couple of promotional videos that I found on the Supporting Waverley And Balmoral Facebook page

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdjpH07dt20

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