Club Duties - How many?

It's always a difficult balance.

In a former sailing club, we had week-end when the OOD was one person - often the person who could not find a crew..

The OOD was planned, but often didn't turn up. This meant that the 1 volunteer had to lay the course, start the race, record the result & man the rescue boat. On the river this was (just) manageable.

My current club (lake) needs 2-3 people to start the racing on the water - plus 1 or more rescue boats. Without the support of the members, the club would not have the regular events. The organisation for this is several orders of magnitude greater than one/two people to manage a fixed-line start & tea.

If you join a club, then (in my view) you take the whole package - duty rota, racing, cruising, social - no-one forces you to join - equlaly, there has to be some understanding of those who can't commit time (e.g. shift work).

Colin 

At Hunts because we are a small club who sails all year round we have made duties a part of the club rules.

This means that individual members MUST do 1 duty and family members must do 2 duties.

It works pretty well, no shows are contacted by the commodore and asked to explain their absence (which means we get very few no shows) and reminded that duties are part of the rules and their membership. Anyone who persistently fails to show can be asked to leave (although we have never encountered this situation yet).

Pretty much everyone is happy to help out in some way. The club has no permnanent staff and is run by the members, for the members.

Without letting this turn into a debate-cum-moan about how many duties are forced upon X of Y Sailing Club, I find it interesting to see just how many or few duties some of you are expected to do, which is the info that I am looking for.

Duty waiver fees. Now I know that they wouldn't work at our club. We are a volunteer-run club that gets an influx of members who should be encouraged to participate - One or two drop out every year because they just didn't get to know anyone in their first year through apprehension or whatever.   I know some would like to "pay" their way out to get the most out of their sailing time, and given the amount of duties that we do, it would be a nice idea but, it would lead to even more pressure on people to do the remaining duties. A nearby club allows this, and it works for them because they have so many sailing members.

ASok is correct in my opinion - we should be (and do) encourage new members to get trained in safety boat/RO duties, but they usually find it a bit daunting to do so in their first year. This would, eventually, lead to a membership base that could be relied upon to fill out the on-the-water duties.

Originally posted by MikeBz At Brightlingsea SC it's 4 duties (rescue or OOD) a year.  If you sail every weekend then I don't think that's too much to ask.  But if you only don't sail that much due to time contraints then it all becomes a bit of a vicious circle - a significant proportion of the odd weekends you have free for sailing you don't get to sail 'cos you're on duty.

Couldn't agree more. It's all too easy for those who are able to attend regularly to pilliory those who are prevented from doing the same and who then take issue with providing services for regulars on a precious free day. Those clubs who operate a duty-waiver fee take advantage of these people's desire to limit the number of days they can't sail/race. Having been a long term shift worker, with mostly just one weekend off per month, I have added considerably to my club's coffers over the years, just to avoid missing yet another day's sailing/racing. It is galling to suffer criticism for doing it.

Edited by Xpletive

Originally posted by Guest#260 At Whitstable we have offered people free membership if they commit to a certain number of duties per year. We have a number of members who just do saftey boat and race recording and never sail. We advertised in the local paper and these people are now valued members who do duties for free membership and don't sail; they just enjoy being part of the club and they also spend money in the bar. Seems to work very well.

That's a good idea.
It must have been next to impossible to find anyone who could count or had
less than six fingers or could stay sober long enough, from within your
regular membership..

Edited by G.R.F.