The State of Club Sailing

I do like children.....some of my favorite meals contain them.

Over time you can exhaust all the people who are available to contribute, if you have 10 people serving in some capacity on a 3 year cycle, you will use up about 30 people over 10 years.

The Thatcher me society has resulted in a generation that are willing to enjoy the efforts of others, but not contribute.

The best committees from a Commodores perspective are where the committee are prepared to challenge his/her wisdom.

Because of the turnover of committees, there is a danger that after five or six years that it does not learn from mistakes.

Actually having professionals on the committee might not give you access to the best professionals ... Successful small businessmen (sorry Woodburner) might be better.

I have said in the past that there is room for a forum for those who participate in Yacht/Sailing club management, so that we can learn from shared experiences.  Today's question is how do you set a permanent racing mark at sea, that can be laid without the use of a hiab, will survive storms and will not be removed by crab fishermen?

Agree with most of that and we are in the final stages of the process of applying to Trinity house to lay permanent marks in the Channel. We do consult with the local fishermen who are equally robbed of tackle by DFL (DownFromLunnon) 'sport' fishermen. We have 'acquired' a couple of railway engine wheels that weigh quite literally a ton, but the problem then comes of how you float them out to the GPS point where we need to drop them, so we now have an alternate plan. Which is chain obviously (we use chain for our racing marks) for a permanent mark with a float at the head and the buoy attaches to it. In order to weight it down it has a sizeable anchor, but you can sink it additionally by using breeze blocks with the hole in and sending them down the chain which will assure the chain lays along the bottom counter to any given over riding current/drift and you know to use I think it's twice the depth in chain length.

That's our plan, however the lad that works here Alex has just got a job working on the ship that travels about the near globe servicing weather buoys, so we're hoping to pick up some tips from him, unlikely we'll get consent 'til seasons end it has been a long process particularly since we've now been designated a marine conservation area.