Mind the gap

and how much more are you prepared to pay for the privilege?

It seems that a lot of people want to be customers/consumers rather than members of a club.

Here's my view- semi-professionals form the membership base are the answer.

In France most clubs run all of their events purely on a volunteer basis but some classes may choose to bring in their own PRO and, perhaps, their team to work with the local club members. Just back from Quiberon (French Finn Nationals) where they have the luxury of being able to run the event from L'Ecole Nationale de Voile (The National Sailing School) with many of their facilities available. They even had an after dinner firework display which was fantastic until they set Quiberon on fire.




There are a few clubs in France that run regular club racing but I have to admit it's very rare. Most French dinghy sailors use their local club for training and race only at Open meetings/National Champs etc. This tends to apply to most mainland Europe countries apart from Holland and Belgium where club racing seems to be on the cards but not every weekend like in the UK.

I was just at a Worlds in France. Whilst the rescue crew etc were employed by the host sailing centre, the catering, bar and additional Committee boat crew (beyond the PRO- there was a pin end boat and a windward mark recorder too) were all local volunteers from what we were told.

It is though a very different structure. Gordon's right that the concept of "club racing" is pretty much gone there.