Another club closure

Originally posted by JimC Well to my mind success is ordinary folks having fun on the water. I don't really give a flying f*** about millionaire toys or professional sailing.

The beauty of sailing as a sport is that you don't need a club to do it. I sail most weekends in much the way that most cyclists cycle and most runners run, I just go out there and do it with a couple of mates. It's not a team sport like football or cricket, it doesn't need a prepared and maintained course/court like golf or tennis, all you need is a boat of some kind and a bit of water you can launch onto. Organised activities like racing benefit from a club structure and I have been a member of at least one sailing club or another for most of my life (12 to 20 and 29 to the present when at 69 I'm a member of two clubs).

Originally posted by 423zero I am an ordinary person, I got into dinghy sailing through someone I knew, (caravanning friend), I have been round sailing, kayaking all my life though, so I had a idea what was going on. Did RYA level one and two.

....kayaks are a lizard infiltration device. Seem innocent ATM but when dinghy sailing is dead these things will morph into enveloping cocoons.

    just a word to the wise

Originally posted by Sam.Spoons The beauty of sailing as a sport is that you don't need a club to do it. I sail most weekends in much the way that most cyclists cycle and most runners run, I just go out there and do it with a couple of mates. It's not a team sport like football or cricket, it doesn't need a prepared and maintained course/court like golf or tennis, all you need is a boat of some kind and a bit of water you can launch onto. Organised activities like racing benefit from a club structure and I have been a member of at least one sailing club or another for most of my life (12 to 20 and 29 to the present when at 69 I'm a member of two clubs).

Anyone can join a sailing club. A good club will provide boats for learning in, training, a published race programme, safety cover to encourage less experienced sailors to push boundaries, boat storage etc etc. Now imagine there was no club, just a stretch of water. A family, with no previous sailing experience, see you and your mate sailing and think that it looks like a fun thing to do.  They have no boat, no idea what boat to buy or where to look, no where to keep a boat if they do buy one, no way of learning how to sail it, no safety cover to boost confidence, no way of knowing when you and your mates will next hold an impromptu race, no way of joining in.  So they’ll be lost to the sport. 

Edited by A2Z - 13 May 22 at 8:51pm