Club motto

Originally posted by maxibuddah These days people are more interested in their wallets than their neighbours.

I suppose being modern men uses up spare time too, years ago men didn't have to consider their wives so much, never went to birth of their kids etc, slightly comic I know, but probably quite accurate.

For some sailing is akin to a religious obligation!

Originally posted by turnturtle This is probably not what people want to read, but personally I think this is all symptomatic of there being far too many sailing clubs offering the same damn thing.... processional handicap racing.   Back in the day we used to change clubs if we fancied a change in class- this at least gave points of difference between local clubs and provided a decent quality of racing in largely suitable boats for any given water.   You could then all come together for annual regattas where handicap racing served a wonderful purpose of uniting the clans and throwing a good craic on the water and off it.   There simply isn't the critical mass left to justify the vast number of sailing clubs imho....  I think we will see consolidation when the baby boomers hang up their hikers and their simply isn't the voluntary resource to keep clubs sustainable.   What would be better for the sport would be a managed process rather than decimation by a thousand cuts.  In fact with a programme of closures and mergers, dinghy sailing might actually reverse the effective churn we are likely to see.  This is especially likely if those clubs that are left, don't offer a quality of racing acceptable to the new generation coming through.  Today's joe average has experienced wonderful racing in the youth and university scenes, even if they never got out the bottom third of the fleet- if local racing wants to compete for their attention, then frankly it needs to up its game somewhat from what a lot clubs seems to offer.

I can see the ex-squaddies point of view. I moved to an area where there are two clubs and both of them just offer handicap racing. After a lifetime of class racing, it quickly got to the point where I no longer race on weekends in my home city. I'm shifting to the other club next year and having another got at getting class racing happening. If that doesn't succeed that's it for me; it'll just be training and regattas.

It is nonsense to get into the train of thought that a plan or strategy from a governing or regulating body is bad. Banks, supermarkets, power suppliers, football, McDonald franchises etc are all markets that are that subject to policies aimed at stabilising and incentivising the market. Totally unregulated free markets with no intervention at all from laissez-faire governing bodies has been shown numerous times to fail.   Our governing body (RYA) should not be afraid of intervening in the clubs and classes market where such intervention would be beneficial. If that means encouraging some clubs to merge, or sanctioning events of certain status, or refusing entry to sailors whose home clubs have identified them as not helping to put rescue boats away, so be it.

But for a club motto "If you want your arse wiping you'll have to pay for it".