your responsibilities as a sailor

Sorry PM, the Bethwaite system is a ball & keyhole.

Neither the flat plate nor the bethwaite system, really work with the modern flat wiring position. The angle of the wire to the harness is such that you can easily become separated. It worked fine when we trapezed more up right. As for BAs I'm not really sure either way. I had an incident sailing a 14 where during a capsize recovery I got caught under the boat and the BA held me against the bottom, luckily I was able to push off of the daggerboard to get out. I have sailed a couple of times without, and felt very vulnerable. With trapeze harnesses my biggest hook up was on the wing to hull elastic on the 700 with the boat going in to windward. In my panic I managed to snap the elastic and broke free, but it was a scary few seconds. That said the danger has never stopped me sailing and probably never will.
As to whether we have a duty of responsibility to the club, well if you are a member, then damn right you do, and as such you owe it to all the other members to do your bit too make it as safe as possible. Whether the same can be said if you are a customer? I'd say not. As a customer you pay for a defined service however that service can come with Ts&Cs to prevent you making an arse of yourself.
I'm comfortable with change, and reluctant to get bogged down in doing it the way it's always been done, but it will be a sad day if members sailing clubs gave way to customer oriented pay to sail centres.

Wasn't there a trap involved at the Abersoch one tick? Laser 4000 iirc?

A gruesome thing to discuss but I thought it was a 400...no trap? It seems that dinghy sailing is pretty safe (touch wood) but is there any kind of record kept of accident causes? At our club we once had a near serious powerboat incident, like the recent tragic Cornwall one, and a case of hypothermia.There was a heart attack death but that had nothing to do with sailing.

I might have missed a bit here, but there is a trapeze spreader which is totally flush, young dumberer uses it to good effect, and the ball and hole idea was a US creation IIRC. Got a feeling the flush plate is built by someone in the Kent area, up Dartford way, they'd probably have it at that All Good Fun shop or know where to get them, I'd like to see a trigger operated system like my kitesurfing release, the one's that I think RWO have give you the tendency to lose the hook if deployed.

We went in on Sunday, really annoying went from bad start to rounding first then back to last again because he couldn't unhook quick enough when the boat was up on it's side so took the inevitable jump down into the sail (we now have a hole in it), a quick release would have prevented that, very difficult to knock it out when it's under tension, I think the solution is a better design at the trapeze hanging bits you hook into.