Attempt by our Committee to change the Club rules without notifying the members

Status
Not open for further replies.
:(

Humm, I have not read all the postings in this thread, but have had personal experience of being in a 'class' club of quite long standing and became Secretary fairly soon after joining, you know the usual situation, lots of long standing members want their say and their way and so the line between Officers and committee and members gets quite blurred at times.
Well I discovered a long standing 'financial irregularity' that I was not happy about, so asked another Club Officer about it, he seemed not to be interested in it at all, acted as if all was quite fine.
Well the outcome was that I was cold shouldered and no one was interested in stopping or challenging said irregularity, so I chucked the Secretaries job in and left the Club behind, pronto.
Still felt aggrieved about the whole affair though, and thought that fairness and justice was not done, but there are more and better run clubs out there. I often think that I should have challenged the Committee and Officers and bought proper closure; but I did not :(
 
Daydream believer said:
He has even gone to the effort of sending personal messages to total outsiders
Click to expand...

Has he? I received a defamatory PM about him from a total outsider, purporting to be from one of the others involved.

I can see why the committee might want him out - if only for bringing the club into disrepute to the public at large
Click to expand...

If a club committee is behaving outrageously it should not deal with criticism by expelling critics. It should deal with criticism by cleaning upits act.
 
NickC said:
The one person I have spoken to who could definitely make it wanted to go along with a a video camera and a few witnesses to ask why they hadn't been invited and then send the results to the RYA in the hope that they might intervene.
Click to expand...
I would very much doubt that they would agree to that. And probably with justification.

Daydream believer said:
My friends in the Phantoms seem to like the club & I have been meaning to go for some time so perhaps we can say HI !! or not, as the case may be
Click to expand...
You seem very keen on protecting the club. You have friends there. Perhaps you should declare your interest.

VicS said:
Its not there any more but it is in another post.
Anyway how can a club be identified from the date it was formed, 1965, or any other.
Click to expand...
Sorry to say Vic but putting
the club is affiliated ...................................... interesting history.
Click to expand...
in Google brings up the club is question.
 
Last edited:
NickC said:
A neighbour and personal friend of the Treasurer of said Club perchance?
Click to expand...

You know you really do get your points wrong.
All the more reason why I feel your thread should not have been started & why I do not accept a your one sided debate.

You should start promoting seahorses - you would fit in well

I think you need to get editing again
 
Lakesailor said:
You seem very keen on protecting the club. You have friends there. Perhaps you should declare your interest.

QUOTE]

Well I sail a Phantom & have met many Phantom sailors. If you asked me their names I would not remember, but I do know that some are members of the club. I would possibly know them by sight. That is the only "connection " I have with the club.

However, over the years I have seen people "moaning" about others who run various organisations. Generally they are without foundation & when you actually quiz them they cannot back up their objections. I do a voluntary job & you would not believe ( perhaps you would) the criticism & letters I get& the work I have to do to get people to pay up, turn up when needed & abide by the rules ( which are there for the benefit of all) people hate me -- yet every year I offer to stand down with absolutely no animosity to anyone at all-- but no body takes up the challenge & each year I have 100% vote in my favour. So who is right?

As an example of a typical complaining club member
I know of one who complained everything was wrong with the club he was in & spent some time persuading others of this. So was invited on to the management committee. He later left the club with much criticism for it saying that he was ignored. In fact minutes showed he only attended a few meetings & said very little. When asked to assist in organising an event he did it so poorly that for the first time in years the event had few people attend.

I am sure lots of clubs have these members & they really harm the club. On my round Uk trip I spent a night at a club & sat drinking whilst a committee meeting was held within earshot. they were really friendly to me & I could see that they were really trying to make things better for members. But they still had problems with those who seemed to do nothing but wreck their efforts. We all know them - rule breakers, abusive, dump boats on other peoples moorings or dinghy parks & disappear, do not pay subs on time without much chasing, do not turn up to work days ( but can always turn up when it suits them) etc etc. yet it is these people that are most critical of the club committees of which they are members

You will see that NickC has made a number of incorrect observations which he has (reasonably) corrected. One might ask how many others he has made. He might be perfectly correct to feel aggrieved but to openly bring the matter to a public forum to air his side of the story is totally the wrong way to go about it.

Either put more effort into organising the club, or shut up, or move on, its up to him. But it is wrong to complain to the world that you think that a committee - who are, after all, volunteers, voted in by the membership at large- are so bad

Nick C might be a really nice guy & have a genuine complaint but until I know otherwise I am going to lean in favour of the club
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
Daydream believer said:
Well I sail a Phantom & have met many Phantom sailors. If you asked me their names I would not remember, but I do know that some are members of the club. I would possibly know them by sight. That is the only "connection " I have with the club.
Click to expand...

OK. But I can say that viewed from hundreds of miles away, you're posts are not coming across as being from someone that is that disinterested. You may have got fed up to the back teeth with some others not appreciating your voluntary efforts elsewhere and are basing your judgment on that, but you certainly appear to be transferring a disproportionate amount of that to NickC.

There certainly seems to be much more to this case than a moaning member. NickC is not coming across as an agressive rule-breaker. He seems to have acted pretty unaggressively when his boat was effectively sabotaged by co-owners who are in a position of authority in the club.

Bleeting about going public on this forum comes across as an attempt to intimidate and silence criticism.
 
NickC said:
Paragraph from our Club's original rules as all members have had hard copy off for years:
View attachment 48758
Now the same paragraph from a recent copy of the rules emailed to me by a Committee member:
The Club Committee may refuse membership, or remove it, only for good cause such as conduct or character likely to bring the Club or sport into disrepute. Appeal against refusal or removal may be made by members.​
Anyone notice the small but important difference? Notice the second from last word has changed from 'to' to 'by'.

Luckily many members still have the original unadulterated version.
Click to expand...

I've met many a sailor who brings our 'sport' into disrepute. I'm not sure I'm not one of them either :p
 
Daydream believer said:
Nick C might be a really nice guy & have a genuine complaint but until I know otherwise I am going to lean in favour of the club
Click to expand...

Or you could just be neutral ... you don't have to lean in favour of either.

I've had a fair share of club politics and instigated the removal of a committee member I (and others) felt was working to his own agenda and not for the benefit of the club. It wasn't a pleasant experience. As with all things there was two sides to the argument and (IMHO) fortunately the rest of the committee seemed to be in agreement with the motion to remove. The subsequent members meeting backed the committee. It sounds all rather negative, but initially it wasn't. The removed committee member had done a lot of positive work for the club, just later on it seems he went too far (again IMHO).
No doubt somebody could try and identify the club in question and may be some people would know about it - but for the general public reading this there wouldn't be any certainty and I don't think they'd particularly care.

As for the OP, tbh, I would just leave - it seems little point in perusing membership. Yes, it may be an increasing issue, but clubs change, memberships change and we don't always fit in ... life is too short to waste.
 
I think you are right. I suggested moving on a bit ago.
The OP seems to want things to settle in his favour, but without a coup d'etat I can't see him being welcome at the club even if he isn't ejected.

I agree that Daydreambeliever seems to be less than partisan, running about like a headless chicken, in an attempt to disbelieve Nick's standpoint based on previous experience he has had elsewhere.

I don't know if Nick isn't telling us something about some bad blood, if perhaps he hasn't spotted he is the only one out of step. Whatever the situation it looks as though there is a controlling cabal in charge and Nick isn't welcome anymore.
 
Daydream believer said:
You know you really do get your points wrong.
All the more reason why I feel your thread should not have been started & why I do not accept a your one sided debate.

You should start promoting seahorses - you would fit in well

I think you need to get editing again
Click to expand...
Ok, sorry about that it's just an unfortunate coincidence that the Clerk of the St Lawrence Fairway Committee lives within 100yrds of the Treasurer of said sailing club then.
 
Last edited:
VicS said:
Anyway how can a club be identified from the date it was formed, 1965, or any other.
Click to expand...
Google is your friend and in this case comes up with the club formed in 19XX Took me all of 20 seconds to isolate the club from the list of 3 possibilities - aptly described as "The club seems to consist of a muddy dinghy park, a stretch of foreshore, a concrete ramp, a starter's box and somewhat fewer than 100 members"
 
Last edited:
Lakesailor said:
but without a coup d'etat I can't see him being welcome at the club even if he isn't ejected.
Click to expand...
Of course the answer is simple: The Committee allow a vote on it by ALL members as provided for by their own Club rules!

Give the members reasonable notice, say 28-days as used elsewhere in the rules, allow representation by the affected member to all members in advance of the vote and voila, situation resolved.
 
I think if I had been a member of a club for 25 years and someone tried to expel me on spurious grounds, then I would feel a little sore.

In the past I had a problem of a clique who tried to control the cruiser racing fleet by suggesting a new measurement handicap system that one had created. It was adopted as IOR ratings were so expensive. Well the person who created the rule had inside knowledge of how the rule worked, but he also designed and built boats. He designed a 26 footer and a couple were built, but did not sparkle. I then bought an extreme racing machine (it was in those days) and it did extremely well under their rule. They then decided to change to the Portsmouth Yardstick to try and knobble me. The sailing instructions specifically mentioned using published RYA numbers, but the committee decided to adjust mine from 106 to 103. This was against their rules. When I protested my rating, they threw it out. I decided to appeal to the RYA and won. They never recalculated any races for the season, so I felt very cheated as some I should have won. The end result was the committee was in a shambles and I decided with all the bad feeling to stop racing, so I bought a cruising boat. This committee's arrogance should have been overturned earlier, but no one would assist me. After the RYA appeal the committee were force to leave, but it was too late as I had become so disillusioned.

Even today, those members who were part of that committee are still on my list of people to avoid at all times. There is enough information here that could identify the club and possibly those members. Do I care, no. They deserve being identified.

So I feel a lot of sympathy for NickC. He has suffered badly with his boat share and forced him to sell his share. What is worse is the Commodore of that yacht club was one of his boat partners who caused all the aggrivation, then he uses his position to expel him from the club. In any sense there has been no fair play by the club official and personally the club should be named and NickC should walk away. He will feel better having aired the matter fully in public and can hold his head high, those at the club can suffer the effects of bad publicity and other member's indigination at the events that have occurred.

When the original thread about the outboard was started it took me less than a couple of minutes to identify the club. With modern technology it is so easy to do and even with this thread it is easy to identify the club as there is information by one doubter that clearly makes the club easy to identify.
 
Lakesailor said:
I don't know if Nick isn't telling us something about some bad blood, if perhaps he hasn't spotted he is the only one out of step. Whatever the situation it looks as though there is a controlling cabal in charge and Nick isn't welcome anymore.
Click to expand...
Well as some of you have no doubt seen from earlier threads here and on other forums there have been other issues over the past few years.

Firstly there was the issue of our Committee deciding to stop allowing the members to see minutes of Committee meetings, see earlier thread - http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?380375-Sailing-Club-Minutes-of-Committee-Meetings-Available-to-members

Then there was the case of the missing mooring chain, see thread here - http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?399465-Thickness-of-chain&highlight=

However neither of these directly affect the discussion regarding the Club Rules on this thread.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Share this page

Top