Club Duties - How many?

We are a small, entirely volunteer run club and try to keep it to 1 duty per single member, 2 per family and helping out at a working party or Open Event. It is part of membership and explained to all prospective members.

We try to ensure the members who don't like racing are offered non racing duties but there only a few of those.

If someone does not do a duty, another member gets an extra burden which is hardly fair. Freeloaders are generally less popular in any environment.

We have vaguely thought that qualified students could be 'employed' to do safety duties by those who want to avoid them but not sure of legal implications.

Another is some members are just not reliable in a safety boat and are not keen on doing a duty in the galley - what then!

Dutyman has helped.

At Hill Head we have about 800 or 900 members, i have 3 or 4 safety boat or instructor duties to do this year, and I'll probably end up helping with open meetings I'm not sailing in as car/boat park person. I think most of the bar officers do 1 duty a month but we have the bar open every evening and lunchtimes at weekends.

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.

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.

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.