Club rescue boat rotas

I look at the 2/3 of dinghies in the park that don't get used and think "I am glad you are helping me pay for my dinghy insurance"!

Hi everyone,

I think that a lot of the problems that we have in our clubs is all to do with ‘caring’.  What I mean is - caring about your club, caring about our sport, caring about other members, caring about prospective members, caring about the racing and its organisation, caring about how clean and tidy the club and the dinghy park looks, caring that members and visitors have had a good time at your club.

I think that ‘naming and shaming’ is fine but some people would not even care about that and treat it as a joke.

Personally, I think that when people join a club, then they should be part of the club and committed to it.  We all know only too well that clubs do not run themselves and it requires a lot of time and organisation to make things tick, particularly with smaller clubs.  It’s funny how it is always the same small group of people who make things happen, year in, year out.

On this note, I feel that when people join clubs, they should take on some personal responsibility and not expect everything to be done for them by somebody else.

Personally (again), I do not agree with ‘no duty’ memberships for an extra fee, or paying somebody else to do duties. The cash may be welcome for club funds but if we all took on ‘no duty’ memberships then there would be nobody to do Race Officer or Support Boat duties.  I feel that members should take on their responsibilities.  As a consequence of this the club quickly runs out of experienced Race Officers who are required to manage the racing and particularly open meetings. 

Another thing that annoys me is that many people join a club just to dump their boat in the dinghy park.  When they apply for membership they say that they are getting back into sailing and want to get involved with the club, they usually have a boat which they have owned for years, but hardly ever sailed.  They won’t sell it in case they want to start sailing again so they want somewhere to keep it.  They join up, take up a berth in the dinghy park, and you hardly ever see them again.  They have enough cash to fork out for subscriptions (which, again, is great for club funds) but they never sail.  Often, berths in dinghy parks are at a premium and new members, who sail regularly, can’t even get a space.  I suspect that at many clubs, a third of boats are sailed very regularly, a third of boats are sailed occasionally and a third of boats never get on to the water.  There is no easy answer to the problem as most smaller clubs, particularly those with small or depleting memberships, are happy to take their money.  These are the same people who never take on any committee jobs or show up for any working parties, etc.

It’s all about ‘caring’.

Ian  (Yorkshire Dales S.C.)

My old club used to give you a third when you did safety/race officer, worked pretty well, and it only worked out unfair on someone if they did not do a duty themselves so the onus was on people to do their bit.