Should members pay to race?

The inverse of the plastic bag analogy, members who do duty get a rates reduction, pay members who race.

The plastic bag thing... They have to pay 5p therefore stop doing it. So, we charge for races and...?

Originally posted by 423zero Sailing is too difficult, that's what I hear from people who do courses and drop out, nothing to do with time or money, pay a couple of hundred quid for a course and you still can't sail and still keep getting stuck in irons.

I can believe that.  I think the only way to deal with that is to advertise the sport in some way that depicts the end result as something worth attaining.  I don't claim to know how you would go about that, but I would suggest that that would be a perfect mission for the RYA to engage in. 

Sailing is too difficult, that's what I hear from people who do courses and drop out, nothing to do with time or money, pay a couple of hundred quid for a course and you still can't sail and still keep getting stuck in irons.

A2Z, the current club I'm a member at I used to race at a lot and so obviously I felt my membership fee was fantastic value, and it was.  Now days I live about 150 miles away from that club but am still a member.  I haven't sailed there at all this year, but that's entirely me not making the most of the membership.  I wouldn't want the people racing there each weekend to be charged more, if the club needed money, I'm more than happy for them to put the membership fees up and that's just too bad for me for not making the most of it.  So I still don't buy the arguement that holding racing costs more and therefore those racers should be asked to pay more. 
To that end, I also think training should be free (of course it's not free, it's covered by general membership fees and bar/galley takings)
As for racing numbers I don't think financial penalties are a positive way to encourage turnout.  Even a nominal fee.  The people who are turning out and are already committing, it's a tough ask to say "hey guys, we wish more people were like you always turning up, so we're going to charge you extra".  The people turning up for racing are typically also buying lunch and buying drinks at the bar after racing. 

If you want to encourage turnout, you have to tackle the issue of why people aren't willing to put time in. 
Why are complete ametuers taking up triathlon willing to put in 14 hours a week training, but ameteur sailers won't put in 2-3 on a sunday?
Road bike racing is booming, and people are happily putting in at least 10hrs training a week to compete but club racing is slowly dwindling? 
I don't buy the "I don't have time" or the "I don't have the money" arguement because it just doesn't stack up against tri and road bike racing.  People can drop £5000 on a bike but sailing is too expensive?  Mum's and dads with kids and jobs can still somehow find ways of putting in a lot of training hours and travel off to racing, but for club sailing it's too hard??

Whether it's the atmostphere of sailing clubs, or whether people just don't see the prestige in doing well and so it's sits at the lowest of their priorites, i don't know.  But the typical arguements simply don't stack up when you compare them to sports that are currently doing rather well in participant take up.