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Posting king
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Joined: 07 Feb 22
Location: Norfolk Broads
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Posts: 126 		Post Options Post Options   Quote The Q Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Another club closure
    Posted: 16 May 22 at 7:48am
Well there was a black lady at our sailing club helping her children sort their dinghies out, that now means according to our Norfolk Statistics we are about right in Racial membership . As Norfolk is 96.5% white, 1.5% Asian, and 0.5% Black..
Still sailing in circles
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eric_c View Drop Down
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Posts: 382 		Post Options Post Options   Quote eric_c Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 May 22 at 9:15am
Originally posted by Paramedic

Originally posted by eric_c

Maybe people should stop trying to rewind pond sailing in the Midlands to last century and look at what sorts of sailing are doing OK elsewhere in the World.

Why? Racing in this country isn't particularly broken. Add to that the thought that we are on the cusp of needing club and local circuit racing more than ever and we actually have a really good infrastructure if people are sensible and clubs work together.

The biggest threat to the sport that I see at my club is that we are slowly being forced to morph into something that none of the members actually want under the guise of enabling the club to survive - I see such "survival" as in name only.

1) Racing isn't particularly broken.
The issue with racing is low turnouts, numbers falling at many clubs.
Plus PY fleets with too few similar/comparable boats to give a decent boat-on-boat 'racing' experience on the  water.
In many clubs the average age of sailors seems high and rising, implying further falls in numbers over the next decade.
Is UK racing any worse affected than the rest of the world? Is there nothing we can learn from looking outside?
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eric_c View Drop Down
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Posts: 382 		Post Options Post Options   Quote eric_c Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 May 22 at 9:30am
Originally posted by Paramedic

Originally posted by eric_c

Maybe people should stop trying to rewind pond sailing in the Midlands to last century and look at what sorts of sailing are doing OK elsewhere in the World.

Why? Racing in this country isn't particularly broken. Add to that the thought that we are on the cusp of needing club and local circuit racing more than ever and we actually have a really good infrastructure if people are sensible and clubs work together.

The biggest threat to the sport that I see at my club is that we are slowly being forced to morph into something that none of the members actually want under the guise of enabling the club to survive - I see such "survival" as in name only.

2) ...the thought that we are on the cusp of needing club and local circuit racing more than ever and we actually have a really good infrastructure if people are sensible and clubs work together.

Who is needing this local racing? why? what for? How badly do they 'need' it? i.e. what are they prepared to pay?  A lot of real estate  'infrastructure' is costing a lot of money and under-utilised. A lot of the organisational club infrastructure is all about running one local club more in competition than co-operaton with other clubs. Running the club is people's hobby, they are working for 'their club' more than sailing in any wider view. In many clubs, the social interests of ex-sailors are a powerful influnce which may not always coincide wth the interests of 'the sport' or current racing sailors. People are sensible, but what are their goals?
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Grumpycat View Drop Down
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Posts: 497 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Grumpycat Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 May 22 at 9:39am
Originally posted by Paramedic

Originally posted by eric_c

Maybe people should stop trying to rewind pond sailing in the Midlands to last century and look at what sorts of sailing are doing OK elsewhere in the World.

Why? Racing in this country isn't particularly broken. Add to that the thought that we are on the cusp of needing club and local circuit racing more than ever and we actually have a really good infrastructure if people are sensible and clubs work together.

The biggest threat to the sport that I see at my club is that we are slowly being forced to morph into something that none of the members actually want under the guise of enabling the club to survive - I see such "survival" as in name only.

I see no sign of either of these two things happening  at my local clubs or at clubs I visit while doing opens . 


Edited by Grumpycat - 16 May 22 at 9:42am
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eric_c View Drop Down
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Posts: 382 		Post Options Post Options   Quote eric_c Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 May 22 at 9:47am
Originally posted by Paramedic

Originally posted by eric_c

Maybe people should stop trying to rewind pond sailing in the Midlands to last century and look at what sorts of sailing are doing OK elsewhere in the World.

Why? Racing in this country isn't particularly broken. Add to that the thought that we are on the cusp of needing club and local circuit racing more than ever and we actually have a really good infrastructure if people are sensible and clubs work together.

The biggest threat to the sport that I see at my club is that we are slowly being forced to morph into something that none of the members actually want under the guise of enabling the club to survive - I see such "survival" as in name only.

3 The biggest threat to the sport that I see at my club is that we are slowly being forced to morph into something that none of the members actually want under the guise of enabling the club to survive - I see such "survival" as in name only.

I think this is a real threat to some clubs. If you see your club as being an amateur dinghy racing club, then there are many threats, ranging from becoming a cheap bar social club through commercial interests to other sporting or boating interests conflicting with the sailing. Some clubs have long history of members with bigger boats, cruising boats, kayaks, windsurfers. Some of them manage to do that without a 'them and us' situation, because the dinghy sailors and cruisers etc are mostly from the same families. 


But don't forget that many clubs have been having these issues through cycles over the last 50 years or more. I remember my first dinghy club struggling a bit with numbers in the late 70s and  wanting to dilute the dinghy format with 'windsurfers' (although winnd was often as scarce as surf!). That was resisted, the club is still there but windsurfing has quite rightly gone elsewhere.
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Sussex Lad View Drop Down
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Posts: 360 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Sussex Lad Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 May 22 at 10:15am
The monoculture and fixed beliefs/belief systems within sailing generally are the very things that thwart any ability to adapt.........those qualities are also what many folk within the sport find comforting.

Attempting to achieve broader appeal is not what most of you want. Some of you have said that explicitly others have inferred it. In that respect sailing will remain "exclusive" in the real meaning of the word IMO. Fair enough, it provides structure and remains predictable in an otherwise scary world. 

As I said earlier, clubs vary in attitude and vibe. Those that can steer clear of the old school way of doing things will always have broader appeal......if.....they can get folk through the door.

It would seem that commercial centres can do this to some degree. Regardless of what we may think about big business involvement in our leisure centres, business is infinitely adaptable if the bottom line dictates. They have no interest in exclusivity.

I suppose the fantasy club setup could be a volunteer/family run club that looks like a commercial one.


Achieving broader appeal as things stand is not going to happen, it ain't wanted.
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turnturtle View Drop Down
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Posts: 2538 		Post Options Post Options   Quote turnturtle Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 May 22 at 10:19am
Originally posted by DiscoBall

Originally posted by davidyacht

There is no doubt that we are fooling ourselves to think that dinghy racing clubs on the whole, are not for the privileged.  By and large most of the “younger” dinghy racers that I see are second or third generation dinghy sailors, and participation in the sport is how they have been brought up.  I am sure that the clubs (and classes) that I have been involved would welcome anyone but they are essentially WASP.  It’s not about the titles it’s not about our colonial past, it’s a technical sport practiced by people steered that way usually by parents, and it has high entry costs.  No amount of social engineering is going to change this in any significant way.
The appeal of windsurfing when it boomed was that it did away with all of this junk, however like many new sports it was relatively superficial and those who participated did not buy into a lifetime activity, but ticked a box off a list … then onto mountain biking … snowboarding … wild water swimming etc.


+100

Its telling that success many equipment based minority sports appear to run in families. Talent may play a part but mostly its the other financial/practical/cultural advantages that count.

The indoctrination is important(!) as the reality is perhaps that sailing 'ain't really all that'. Every sport claims it is the absolute best est way to spend your time... Rather more likely that for a similar level of enjoyment to other sports sailing is a huge faff.

Suspect that people without a family history in the sport are rather more clear eyed about this, especially compared to a tiny niche of people who comment on a forum, about a subdiscipline of a minority sport... :)

yep - windsurfing, SUP and more recently longboard surfing have shown that being a better waterman is about respecting the element and choosing the right toy for the conditions.  If I'm honest with myself, I'm no longer interested (enough) in racing dinghies, which is why every boat fund stash has found itself spent on other things more recently.  Hiring beach cats ticks my box in Spain for sailing and I'm sure there'll be something big and floating with flappy things to play with in Greece this summer.

I swear some people only race dinghies for the competitive aspect of racing rather than any real love of natural motion in the elements; nothing wrong with that, but it's easy to see why a club with such a narrow focus around this haemorrhages members to boom sports - golf, squash and arguably road biking en vogue at the moment.
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eric_c View Drop Down
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Posts: 382 		Post Options Post Options   Quote eric_c Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 May 22 at 10:24am
Originally posted by Grumpycat

....
I see no sign of either of these two things happening  at my local clubs or at clubs I visit while doing opens . 

Over the years, I've seen a few clubs overly influenced by paid staff and catering interests. A slippery slope to high overheads.
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turnturtle View Drop Down
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Posts: 2538 		Post Options Post Options   Quote turnturtle Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 May 22 at 10:29am
Also - shout out to Sussex Lad for shining a torch on the monoculture of dinghy sailing, if organised dinghy racing in the UK wanted to change, it would have done it by now. 
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CT249 View Drop Down
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Posts: 399 		Post Options Post Options   Quote CT249 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 May 22 at 10:46am
Originally posted by eric_c

 
Since about 1960, if not before, the wealthy and/or professional sailors have had a significant role in getting ordinary people interested in sailing. Chichester, Rose, Blyth and all those people inspired others. More recently, Ellen Macarthur, and a few others?

I'm not sure looking acceptable to the maximum number of people is what matters, maybe it's more important to deliver some 'value' to enough people who are likely to be interested? It doesn't matter what football fans or cricketers think of us if they're busy doing football or cricket.  There maybe no point in chasing the mass market like in the 60s, because the world has changed. In a UK where 1.5 million people go skiing every year, just to pick one alterative way of spending cash on fun, 'sailing' might need to face the fact it will have a smaller market share. In my view it's more viable to provide a good quality offering to people who want it, than to go chasing people who are not really interested. These days there are a lot of alternatives to tacking around a small pond.Spread yourself thin, sell yourself short. It's inevitable that some clubs are unviable in a shrinking market and that people will shop around for clubs which offer them what they want, or question whether clubs serve them at all.
OTOH, some small clubs have had their ups and downs for 50 or 100 years, people come, people go, boats change a bit but sailing is still sailing.

The evidence seems to show that Rose, Macarthur etc presented a very, very different image to the way sailing is currently being promoted.

Rose's image was about the local greengrocer with an old boat he already owned, doing a great thing. Macarthur was a great contrast to the big Viking-like pros who had earlier done what she did. Both of them were showing that whether you were an ageing grocer or a young woman, you could do great things.  That's very different from sending the message that doing great things in sailing is only for those who live in an area where you can sail a foiler, and you can afford one and the years to learn to sail it.

Rose and Chichester were around at the same time that sailing was being promoted by left-wing media like the Mirror and by the sailing establishment like Yachting World as a sport that the average person could do, with boats like the Mirror, Ent, Cadet, etc. That's very different to the elitist way the sport is selling itself today.

To distinguish between memory and reality, I grabbed my three mid '60s YW annuals from the shelf. In a total of 330 or so pages, they spend about 2.5 pages talking about the America's Cup (this was in the time when Soveriegn was working up) compared to about 11 pages specifically talking about Snapdragons, SCODS and other yachts for the middle classes.


The same theme can be seen and proven by page numbers etc throughout that sample and other media. They covered C Class cats, the emerging multis and other leading edge classes with respect - but they spent far more time talking about GP14s, small offshore racer/cruisers and other types that many people could afford and could sail each week at their local waterhole. That is very different to the situation today, and it's a simple fact.


I didn't say that we had to talk to the maximum number of people. What I was driving at was that IF we tried to talk to the maximum number (which is a bit of a mantra now) we shouldn't turn them off by portraying the problematic bits of our sport (ie the elitism) rather than the good bits.


Sure, the '60s have gone but what does that mean? Cycling was big in the '60s and has returned more recently. Longboard surfing in many places was big in the '60s but has returned in a modified form recently. Sure, there are more sports around but there are sports that have declined (windsurfing, if compared to boat sailing; squash; rugby and cricket in many areas, etc etc etc) and other sports have seen a revival, so we can't just refer to the arrival of other sports as if it allows us to escape examining our own sport to see what we can do better.


I completely agree that we shouldn't chase people who are not that interested, and to me that means getting away from the BS that we should be promoting an inacessible elite model of the sport, rather than selling this wonderful sport we have.

It's only a data point of two, but the club I run is now as big as it was in the boom day (and there's been very little population growth here) and the class I used to run is just about the fastest-growing in the world. In both cases, we are selling a story that seems simplistic and perhaps old-fashioned but is actually the product of a lot of research and experience. It's working far better than the hyper performance BS that so much of the industry, media and "governing bodies" are throwing around.


Edited by CT249 - 16 May 22 at 10:52am
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