Club changing rooms ... are they open?

Originally posted by Sussex Lad    What does "Social Membership" mean now? It's a large chunk of the membership for many clubs. What can a club do? Memberships were already in decline before the pandemic. Any Exec coms discussing strategies to combat these problems?

Edited by Chris_H - 24 Aug 20 at 12:34pm

We are now seeing as much activity as in 2019, albeit of a slightly different style but activity all the same.

Originally posted by Chris_H Originally posted by Sussex Lad    What does "Social Membership" mean now? It's a large chunk of the membership for many clubs. What can a club do? Memberships were already in decline before the pandemic. Any Exec coms discussing strategies to combat these problems?  I have said it before many times - there are already too many clubs to support too few sailors. A natural cull or amalgamation of clubs would ensure the survival of the sporting facilities.   C19 is having an affect in all aspects of our lives - as an example, shopping high streets will never be the same again - perhaps the time is ripe to look at a new way of how sailing clubs exist, cater for, and are run

Yep Totally agree. Commercially run clubs?  not that I'd join one, they do seem more adventurous and adaptable though.

Reading this thread it seems that most clubs are running on 2 cylinders ATM. The WHO reckons 2 years before we see the back of the pandemic and when the kids go back to school (rightly so IMO) the R number will probably go up so the restrictions may not be lifted any time soon. 

we'll see.

a couple of simple factors - what has been the traveller's events loss has been club sailing's gain (no bad thing imho).

Originally posted by H2 Its the same doomsayers on here predicting the end of sailing as a result of COVID, yet we have seen more new members this year than normal even without running open days or advertising. Sunday racing last weekend saw 28 boats out which for a small pond in the Cotswolds is alot. I am not sure where some folks are looking to get their negative views, but based on what I see, COVID has been a boon for our sport!

Being adaptable requires that you can foresee potential problems that may arise........so that you can (yes, you guessed it) "adapt". It's also called being "proactive" (yep, you guessed it again).

The sailing community in general is terrible at these particular skills preferring instead to dream of bygone days of class fleets, heavy old boats, copious numbers of volunteers, patronising all and sundry and archaic names..........that's the way it was and that's the way we'd like it to be again. It ain't gonna happen. 

About 15 yrs ago I started a thread on here about declining participation according to the Sport England survey, "what could be done about it?" was my question. Nearly every response  was along the lines of  "The numbers aren't specific enough" or more commonly "Na, it's a load of rubbish, still good here", Denial.........Where is the sport of sailing now? I wasn't saying that we could do anything about it, I was just asking folk to think about it. No Joy.

Sadly the decline was already happening, it is happening. The covid restrictions are another potential nail in the coffin of the sport and if many of the Member run clubs don't get a little more creative in their response then the pandemic will do further damage to participation figures and the commercial clubs will flourish.......not what I want personally.