Duties.

Who is the ons of proof on though? Do they have to prove they can't afford the subs or do you have to take their word for it?

Proof of income alone doesn't prove affordability or otherwise of the subs. A retired member with no mortgage living in a small flat may have a very low income but equally low outgoings, a single parent living in rented accommodation and working full time may have substantially more income but be barely able to make ends meet. A paperwork nightmare indeed. The people who designed the CASC regs don't seem to have thought it through.......

It must be very hard resourcing a duty rota with so few active members. I organised the sailing programme and duty rotas at my club for several years, I found it hard to a) ensure there was sufficient skills on duty for any one event, but also b) not give members with more skills and experience an unrealistic level of duties. Even with the 100 or so members we had I was struggling to keep duty commitments to less than 3 or 4 a season, and even then we were very reliant on some of our retired guys doing additional duties for mid week sailing and other events. I used to get somewhat frustrated at AGM time when individuals would rock up and say "why doesn't the club do xyz race series/training course/open event etc etc". Well yes, but of course it's putting more and more of a load on our volunteers who at some point say "enough is enough".`

At our club we have to do four half day duties per year. The duty rota opens on 1st January and anyone who has failed to sign up by end of January gets duties allocated and then they are responsible to do them or swap. Automated emails are sent 30 days and 7 days before the duty as a reminder and the race officer usually gets in touch with members in the few days before they are on duty to arrange who does what. Seems to work well with few issues. There is an option to buy out of doing duties at £50 per slot so a total of £200 if you wish. No idea if anyone does actually pay this!

Originally posted by Sam.Spoons Originally posted by Late starter By informally this can often mean having one of the sailors sounding pursuit racing starting signals then sailing after the fleet once everyone's started !    The finishing order is basically down to scouts honour within the participants.  To an old school guy like me this feels like unbelievable amateurism with some big risks around safety cover, but hey folk seem to accept it as it gets them out of duties.  We did this for years at my old windsurfing club. With only 5-10 racing it was gate starts and self rescue (windsurfers are pretty self sufficient and the safety RHIB was on hand, and on the water if there was much wind). We even did the same successfully at some open meetings with up to 20 sailors taking part. I don't see it as a question of people 'getting out' of doing duties but a way of allowing everybody to sail/race on the day. For a small number of racers who are not taking it too seriously it seems like an equitable compromise.

Yes, and I think that's where I was coming from. Old gits like me won't like it as we've been too schooled to flinch whenever someone mentions health and safety, but it's this sort of compromise that actually does seem to work for the guys at the club who do it.