Club Duties - How many?

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.

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 

There's a strong tendency towards pay-n-play these days, especially in the larger clubs where you can't
hope to know everybody and you've got a less 'clubby' atmosphere to start with. And a lot of people
don't race, don't have the time to sail frequently and can't commit weeks ahead to any particular date
for a duty. So do you stick to your guns and say 'You're a member - you do the duty" and risk them not
being a member next year, or do you compromise and let them treat your club like an amenity. Difficult
choice.

I dunno. The existence of the pay-n-play members doesn't detract from the enjoyment the rest of us get from
'doing it properly'. In fact it sponsors it, as the club has more members (=more money) and doesn't have to do
anything for them (=no cost). If Rutland and Grafham don't get good turnouts, that doesn't mean they've got too
many pay-n-players, it just means there's too few, er, clubby members. The former only affect the latter if the
club hits its membership limit and has to start turning people away.

I'm definitely a 'clubby' member BTW.

at broadstairs which is not a very big club but seems to have a big heart members all take turns at things like bar duty , rescue boats either crew or helm.we have full time race officers who take turns.if we have an open everyone helps in every way like some take turns to work in the galley making the food.so the whole club pulls as one.which seems to work great and the people who come along to the opens always quote what friendly club it is.

andy