py failing

You can never please all the people all of the time, so the best the RYA can do is to please most of the people most of the time.

I think you have to look at what you go sailing for. If you want to win pots, then you buy the right boat for the conditions at the club (i.e. what fleets are there? If there are no fleets and you need to sail on a PY, then which boat wil give you the most advantage, most of the time). If however you go sailing for fun, then you'll buy a boat based on what you like to sail and not worry about the PY.

with this argument about "not being able to afford £10k for a new merlin", unfortunately whether you're class racing of handicap racing, you'll be disadvantaged in an older boat, it's as simple as that. If you can only afford an old boat, it's unlikely that you'll beat the guys with the new toys.

on the subject of 2how you save the clubs", well I think that a lot of that comes down to the clubs taking a long hard look at themselves and their attitude towards the sport and towards visitors. I think that this whole "you need to be a member to sail here" attitude it fundementally outdated and is stopping people from joining the sport and getting involved in their club. Clubs need to be more open and inclusive to anyone who wants to use their facilities. Try having open days, try having low-cost memberships for people who only want to use the club occasionally, try being more open to people who want to day sail. Some clubs have winter membership, but why not have summer membership for those who only want somewhere to practice on the odd Sundays between open meetings. I don't belong to a club, because I don't want to sail every weekend throughout the year, so I pay to day sail when I want to. If my local club however offered me a deal for about £50 per year as an "occasional user", they could happily have my money and my committment, but I can't justify the thick end of £200 when I'll only probably use the place 4 or 5 times in a season.

There's no doubt many reasons why some clubs have dropping membership.  iIdoubt the inadequacies on PY is one of them...

On the topic of club membership though, many classes insist that sailor be club members for them to compete in class events like national championships.  I guess this encourages club membership, but it seems a bit unfair as if you compete in a traveller cuircuit regularly it doesn't leave much time to sail at the club you've forked out to join...

Dammit, well said Viola.  Spot on. 

(The Osprey Godess tells it as it is!!!)

By "my committment" I did indeed mean doing my share to help out. The point being that the more members/users of the club there are a)the more money the club gets, not only from membership and sailing fees, but also from food and bar takings, meaning that they can start to outsource some of the jobs so there are lessjobs for the members to do, and b) if there are more people to divide the jobs between, then the burden on each person become insignifficant.

Draycote for instance have a great system, where they effectively pay people to do race and rescue duty by discounting their membership. So if someone is prepared to do half-a-dozen days in a year, they get their membership pretty-much free. Now that makes heaps on sense.