Club Duties - How many?

There is a contradiction between wanting high quality service - good race management, excellent food and a well poured pint... and calling on volunteers to perform these services only a few times a year. How good a sailor would yu be if you only sailed 3 times a year?

Umpires need to officiate at least once a month if they want to maintain standards. Likewise race officers. I would suggest that the situation is similar with catering ad bar-keeping.

If your club has a memebr who is interested in spending time officiating in on form or another then roll out the red carpet - reduced if not free membership, invitations ot club dinners, buy him/her the gear they need...whatever it takes to keep them keen, happy and doing the job.

On another point - juniors should be given experience in race management,  protest committee duties and all the other tasks (over 18 only where alchol is involved). However this should be managed so that they are also being trained by competent adults who are capable of transmitting their savoir faire.

Gordon

The idea of becoming qualified sounded great - and it was.   Then the duties came rolling in...

Still, I guess we have to live with it (only 1 resignation this year from the rescue team).

Thanks to you all for your input, the meeting proved to be somewhat productive.

Looking at how many people are racing on a good, typical day = 30ish

We are always pushed to recruit rescuers/ROs - most people who sail maybe 5 times a year should do them, but because they aren't regular racers, they don't really count towards the rescue crews. When I first started, I had 1 duty, then 4 in a year. Last year's 15 has now dropped to 8 rescue boat duties, but there will no doubt be at least 1 bar duty to come.

You're right Mikey. Galley duty is less popular than the bar duty, and our membership base is well-dispersed, so people tend to casually "forget" that they have a duty. However, we do have plenty of willing volunteers and mums who do a great job.

Overworked? I'm inclined to agree - but yes we do pay MUCH lower annual fees than the club down the road. I think I mentioned to ASok a few posts ago, that the way forward is to get more people on the water doing water duties - We spend (IMO) way too much time doing on the water duties for the number of members/number of people actually competing in a race. Unless racing at every opportunity, it does feel like about a third of our time is tied up on the water, but not sailing! Rant over.

I'm starting to wish that I hadn't asked the original question - I'm beginning to think that we are being over-worked at our club!

Our usual allocated duty teams consist of 1 RO with 2 assistants, 1 Beachmaster, 4-5 people in RIBs. 2 on the bar, and 1-2 galley slaves to assist 1-2 cooks!     The bar/galley crews are not necessarily sailing members, so there are usually enough of them to pick from the membership, but strangely the source of most no-shows.   I'm thankful that we can usually hold races owing to most people turning up. No racing due to a lack of rescue bods would be a disaster - Whoever is desperate for a drink is likely to stand in behind the bar, at least temporarily!

No-shows result in a call from Committee/Commodore. Membership renewal will be questioned in the case of consistent no-shows.