Club Volunteers

At BBSC we publish the roster about a month in advance and post it to each person involved, we also publish it on the web site. http://homepages.rya-online.net/BoughBeechSC/Duties/may.htm The OOD phones round in the week before  to make sure all are going to turn up.  It is the persons own resposibility to get a swap if their date is not suitable.  We only rarely get a "no show" and if the reason is not good enough they get a blast of a letter from the Comodore.  I suppose persistent ofenders would be asked not to apply next year.  If you look at our site you'll see the duties we roster. 

The most difficult to fill used to be Safety Boat Skipper and Race Officer.  We have solved the first by having a dedicated team who do more than the obligatory 2 duties a year but they get training and generally enjoy themselves.  We are about to do the same sort of thing for Race Officers but this is a skill which sometimes even the best racers aren't good at.  We are demanding at BBSC though because we always start and finish our races from the water and insist on a good beat and a square line.  Perhaps that's why we have so many top sailors at our club.

Our club publishes your OOD duties in the handbook and on the front page of the website - plus one of the fleet captains contacts you in advance and makes sure you know it's your turn. If you can't make it, it's your responsibility to do a swap with someone else.  I think we had one no-show last year so that seems to work.

Rescue boat drivers/crew is a different story - basically because not every dinghy sailor is able to drive one.  So we have a small group of people who drive RIBS a lot plus a ggroup of dinghy sailors who take turns as well.  And of course there are someyotties who drive when there's dinghy racing but no yacht racing.  It is hard work though - I know, I've just retired after 3+ years as rescue boat manager....

I expect every club and class association experiences this problem. It is to do with the wider range of leisure-time activities people now enjoy (or sometimes, that their families inflict on them) plus, for many professional people, higher incomes but ever-longer working hours plus increased "domestic duties" in two-income households.

If you join a golf club, they don't expect you to mow the greens or paint the club-house. For historical reasons, and because organising races takes quite a few people, sailing clubs do expect this but are finding it increasingly difficult to persuade people to do so. Unfortunately this is out of sync with social changes. I think larger clubs especially will increasingly use professional employees and contractors and have to charge higher subs to pay for it.

Lol ok well OOD we have a rota with a security officer and two OOD's they have to sign into the book, and anyone can check who was suposed to be doing it and if they did or not, so just pressure from people if they dont do that I supose keeps people doing that.

Rescue we have specifice people who dont sail who do our rescue (all fully qualified via the club) up till recently they jsut did this out of courtesy but this year the club has reduced their membership.

Ok we never have the situation where the social events arent suported, we do have some that are better supposrted that others, this has been adressed by looking into what events people actualy want.

The roles on the comittee I cant help you with that one. Sorry.

All of the above is only aplicable to main club sailing the youth who sail on a diferent day is run compleatly by parents, and we get people to help with rotas and just asking them to do it for a day and then they realise its not to hard. Also as it is youth sailing the parents dont sail so are available to lend a hand.

Also honnesty about what needs to be done and wether people are supporting the club or not helps, if people find out that someone else didnt do it they might volunteer next time.