Originally posted by Demelza Following on from my other post. I would like to be able to just be able to turn up at an inland sailing venue without being a club member and play for my grand kids to sail a boat approx half a dozen times a year. Do any sailing clubs in Surrey,Middx,Berks or Hampshire have such a facility?

Pay and play is not a 'club' activty, it's a business model.

Try googling 'sailing dinghy hire' and the county of your choice.

Bray Lake, £60 for two hours. £45 for members.

About what I saw on a beach in Cornwall recently.

Andrew Simpson only seems to offer courses.

notwithstanding the above most of the larger reservoirs are happy to take day members in my experience. I'd be surprised if Queen Mary, Datchet etc didnt take day members.

Not sure on the cost and expect they want qualifications etc 

Email them at

edit add. For all the ideas of what additional things Clubs could offer somebody has to organise it all through from start to finish. For some smaller outfits the priority is going sailing, weird heh. Yes I can that this idea could be viewed as unwelcoming but it really comes down to what is possible with limited resources and quite often the resource of primary concern is person power. 

 An Organisation of people with a common purpose or interest who  https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/meet" rel="nofollow - meet   https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/regularly" rel="nofollow - regularly  and take part in shared Activities. 

In our case that's 400 members ish, those running the club from Commodore to tea bar or safety boat are all Volunteers.. They cannot take time off work to keep the place open for 12 hours every day just in case someone wants to turn up to hire a hoat..

Getting £150 from someone who turns up and sails 6 times a year, is not the same as getting £150 from someone who wants to be a member and who may only sail 6 times a year, but who does a couple of duties, turns up for an annual working party, volunteers to help out in other ways and comes to socials and spends money behind the bar.

I'm not criticising you for wanting to do it the way you propose, but at my sailing club we're not particularly short of income, but we are short of people who put in time to volunteer to do things that have to be done and are reliant on a small band of really helpful people. And I suspect a lot of other smallish clubs are the same.  

 

you'd be running at a loss...

Originally posted by Demelza Many thanks for all the info and suggestions. I can understand that a lot of clubs would like you to become a member rather than offer day sailing but not everyone wants to spend out on annual membership or commit to regular use of club facilities and all that entails. Pity,they are missing out on additional income.

You're welcome to start a club on that basis, or maybe make it work at one of the very small number of members' sailing clubs which are failing. The issues with offering sailing to non-members are not trivial. There is a whole load of H&S and Safeguarding for a start. Licensing. Insurance. The need for qualified staff.

There have been loads of business operations based on making dinghy sailing available to the casual public, it's a very tough way to make a living, and the market only supports a small number of commercial operators. I don't think my club is missing anything by not offering services to non-members, we don't particularly need a small amount of sporadic income, we could do a few more committed members of course!                                                                     

Also, while there are actual businesses offering this kind of activity,  it might not actually be a good thing for members' clubs to undercut them by using volunteer labour. The commercial operators do bring some value to the sport IMHO                                                                                               

Ive only paid to play a few times times and that was a couple of decades ago , a couple of times at Rutland and once at Grafham and certainly at Rutland it was though a commercial operation not the sailing club . 

I've seen many of the former, very few of the latter. As others have noted, for a typical club it's just not worth the small amount of money.

My club looked at how we could leverage the resources we had (water, clubhouse, changing rooms, boats etc) to widen access through greater/easier use of club boats etc.  We concluded that the additional income we might have generated would more than likely not offset the additional costs we would incur, even if we disregarded the biggest issue we had which was finding additional volunteer labour to staff the scheme. Some of those in favour of this approach thought we'd get additional membership as a result, but the majority didn't agree hence we didn't go ahead. Good luck to those clubs that think pay to play is for them, but personally I think its not a good business model for most clubs hence the lack of take up. 

Originally posted by fab100 if casual, non-member pay and play like this was viable, someone would already be doing it successfully.

People are doing it 'successfully' but it's a small market. There's a much bigger market for hiring out SUPs at £20 per hour than dinghies at £30 an hour. The return on a £300 SUP is going to be a lot better than on a £3000 dinghy.

But £25 per visit, 6 times a year would get you full membership for a year at many clubs. 

I get the impression you want the sailing without the commitment of helping the club? How do you imagine the vast majority of clubs survive? It's through the kindness and commitment of its members. 

The J80s are now utterly shagged, and need replacing. Everything that was a 6mm rivet/bolt when new is probably up to about 12mm now, what with drilling out and replacing. 

As to why they've gone with Sonars, I don't know. I can easily understand going with a 23' boat rather than 26' - easier for a crew of 3, especially for women on the mainsheet, Plus there isn't 

that much room on QM, so a smaller boat is handy. They do need a boat with a symmetrical kite for match racing, but how the finances work and why they didn't go for say RS21s, I don't know. 

Would be nice to know sail area/wetted surface ratios for the J, Sonars and RSs. As they do a lot of their sailing on QM in winter, it's frequently very light winds, so a boat that can go well in under 5kts of breeze is a help. I have the vague impression that the Sonar does well here, as a boat designed for Long Island Sound? 

Nice from an umpiring perspective to not have transom hung rudders, though. And for those doing repairs. 

Some do, some don't, I believe. 

The J70s were bought new with benefactors help.

The Mermaids were paid for by the club, I think. But SVYC has been running P2P Mermaid racing since just after WW2. 

I think the Southern has picked up their 70s as and when finances allow. 

Not sure about RCYC, but I can't believe a 707 costs that much now?

Yep we thought of that when we looked at widening use of club boats to a sort of pay and play at my club. We couldn't come up with any sort of business plan that made sense, and there was a strong opinion held by some that actually this sort of approach would actually lose us money as some of our more fringe members would probably switch to pay and play. As others have said, clubs exist for a reason and tend to be run for the benefit of our members first and foremost.

There are enough clubs round the UK even in small areas,  that you could easily sail 5/6 times without paying just by going to opens.

There is, of course, one well known P2P operation - Minorca Sailing. Slightly different model, though!! 

The down side of that is the pain rigging and derigging after every event plus you still have to have somewhere to keep your boat . 

I just  if looked up the cost of hiring a Broads Motor day boat and that's £40 an hour, £145 for a full 8 hour day. ..............

 They are a lot tougher than a sailing boat, don't need time rigging and un rigging, just a quick top up of fuel. Don't have safety boats in attendance. What ever fuel costs are, man power is more expensive...............

I can't see quality dinghies being for hire that includes rigging and unrigging launching  done for you, for less than £50 an hour.. unless subsidised by other rentals such as canoes...............

Hunters Yard at Ludham in Norfolk,  will hire you a " Halfdecker" for £86 -101 an hour https://huntersyard.co.uk/our-boats/half-deckers/ they're around 20-23ft of keelboat. Hunters Yard is a preserved fleet depending on a mix of full time and volunteer staff to make it work...........

I've sailed / raced in both Rebels,   and Yare and Bure One Designs (AKA White boats). They are both a wonderful sail. The Rebel is heavier but makes up for is with more sail area.. Both you have to sail the keel round in a tack , not crash tack like a dinghy................

I'll also note that on rescue boat duty. I now have rescued hire canoes twice. 

Once when a two man capsized within sight of my club, they had been to a pub and were on their way back. and were wearing the womens life jackets!! (they were in the other canoe).................

 The other time, two ladies in a similar two person canoe, two children in single person canoes, they had paddled down stream with wind and tide, but couldn't get back against wind and  tide.. One of the women was in tears as the children had paddled round the next corner...........

Racing had just been abandoned due to high winds, so I towed the lot back to the hire base a couple of miles up river, picking up the buoys on the way back.  

Originally posted by The Q Going back to the £25 a visit hiring a boat.. it's just not economic.....

£25 an hour gets you the use of a £500 sit on kayak or paddleboard.

There's a couple of places where you can get 'pay to play' but you need also to be a member, but membership is on a monthly pay basis, so more like a 'gym subscription'

Queen Mary - Ashford Middx - https://www.facebook.com/QueenMarySelect/

HISC - S. E Tip of Hayling Island (but worth the drive) - http://www.hisc.co.uk/ - note you would be expected to do duties here however.