Alternative to sailing clubs?

Originally posted by Oinks Our Club is our home-from-home. Our friends are there, our son was brought up there, many f our best memories were there. Can't imagine why anyone would ditch the club scene to just go sailing off a pubic slipway or somewhere like Bewl. Each to their own I guess, but if it wasn't for our home club, well I'd probably not be sailing now.

Interesting comments. Lets start by saying clubs are great. In answer to some of the comments, so its all right to put all the emphasis of safety for ones self on the Race officer and rescue boat crew but not ones self. Interesting thought's. Last time I looked the RNLI was there to help us if possible when we got it badly wrong as a last resort. Saving life's at sea would seam to have a fair bit of Hollywood in it. Great line in a rescue last year we turned back towards the harbor towing them and it was like the sea calmed down and the waves shrunk in size.  May be that was because you were now doing five knots down wind now going with the swell instead of 20 knots into the wind and over the waves. 

RNLI have no issues whatsoever with call outs, their policy is to not judge, I regularly sail on the sea without cover, using my own common sense, would imagine most people on here are the same.

Perhaps the real issue coming out of this is that Sailing clubs, being the custodians of waterside access, should broaden their remit to allow as wide a variety of on/in water activity as possible. I had a very interesting chat to a well known boat builder a couple of years ago , who made this very point. Sailing clubs have waterside access, parking, changing rooms, catering facilities, and could be open 7 days a week for groups with different water use interests. Some already are, but most are not.The pandemic has temporarily stopped the slowly declining traditional dinghy club scene, and maybe it is the ideal opportunity for clubs to make the change into multi activity waterside centres, with the extra benefit of a good social content that a "club" provides as opposed to a waterside centre. A typical UK club could provide usage for racers, cruisers, day sailors, rowers, SUPs, wild water swimmers, kayakers, etc etc. In a 7 day week, there would be ample opportunity to have different days and times for each activity type if they could not combine their usage. 

Originally posted by davidyacht In Pre-Covid times it would have been possible to race in relatively local open meetings most weekends which would obviate the need to be a member of a club ... the problem as a previous poster points out is that this approach relies on the selflessness of volunteers at clubs to run open events.  In times gone bye you could not participate in open events without being a member of a sailing club, however there is an increasing use of RYA membership to avoid this arrangement.  Also back in the day the open meeting sailor returned to their club for the winter, which often offered the most competitive racing, however this may have been overridden by the plethora of one off winter events

David,

How far back is your back in the day? When I started on the open circuit in the 80s and 90s there were a good few racing under RYA membership. Probably less than I observe today.

I do agree that the winter handicap events may have have had an impact. We enjoyed the 2012 SailJuice but decided to winter club race thereafter.

Matt