RYA inflation

zoidberg

zoidberg

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Huh!

I've just had an email inviting me to the RYA's Instructor Conference weekend next February. There looks to be lots of workshops to attend, lots of 'talking shops'. However, at £350 for l'il ol' me plus a bright-eyed girlfriend I'd have to take out a wee mortgage! The Nescafe is free...!

Time was I'd get an invite to the RYA's cocktail parties. They too were free, but one had to join in the scrum around the bar, elbowing YBW/IPC editors out of the way and miming that one's hearing aid was switched-off/failed when accosted by John Goode or Tom Cunliffe.

Them were the days!

As one young-and-lovely forumeer said to me a while ago about the NTL crew - "Not my demographic...."

Perhaps that's a good weekend for the slippers and the latest John Le Carre.... :rolleyes:
 
zoidberg said:
Huh!

I've just had an email inviting me to the RYA's Instructor Conference weekend next February. There looks to be lots of workshops to attend, lots of 'talking shops'. However, at £350 for l'il ol' me plus a bright-eyed girlfriend I'd have to take out a wee mortgage! The Nescafe is free...!

Time was I'd get an invite to the RYA's cocktail parties. They too were free, but one had to join in the scrum around the bar, elbowing YBW/IPC editors out of the way and miming that one's hearing aid was switched-off/failed when accosted by John Goode or Tom Cunliffe.

Them were the days!

As one young-and-lovely forumeer said to me a while ago about the NTL crew - "Not my demographic...."

Perhaps that's a good weekend for the slippers and the latest John Le Carre.... :rolleyes:
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Also a recipient of that invitation. I'm struggling to maintain any enthusiasm to maintain my RYA membership. The organisation does much to be applauded but increasingly acts as a body orientated towards financial gain rather than advocating participation in sailing.
 
yacht clubs should invite the RNLI for the day to thier clubs for a change. Our club does and the RNLI were surpised at how yachts and dingies are handled and not as easy as they imagined
 
The RYA is distinctly a money making body and has been for well over a decade. I assume there was a change in management and said management wanted to be paid.

Here's a current job advertisement:

[quote="RYA Website]Head of Performance Support

Salary: £50,000 - £55,000 per annum

Permanent – Full-time (35 hours per week)

Location: RYA’s Performance Unit in Portland

The RYA offers a range of benefits which include; a personal pension scheme, free life insurance and a total annual leave package of 28 days (plus public holidays). [/quote]

In other words...

Overpaid secretary taking direction from the CEO. They've even got

High Performance Manager, RYA Scotland

Salary: £31,700 - £36,000 per annum (dependent upon experience)

Permanent – Full-time (35 hours per week)

Location: Edinburgh

The RYA offers a range of benefits which include; a personal pension scheme, free life insurance and a total annual leave package of 28 days (plus public holidays).
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Effectively an overpaid supervisor. If you're willing to support such an organization, then by all means, I take it you donate to Oxfam too? For me, I'd sooner put the money to where it is going to do the most good. (Largely my local yacht club or the RNLI as much bad press as they're getting lately at least they go out and save lives). Unfortunately a good many commercial sailors are tied to the RYA because plenty of insurance/chartering agencies demand RYA certification. (Sounds like a cartel to me).
 
zoidberg said:
Huh!

I've just had an email inviting me to the RYA's Instructor Conference weekend next February. There looks to be lots of workshops to attend, lots of 'talking shops'. However, at £350 for l'il ol' me plus a bright-eyed girlfriend I'd have to take out a wee mortgage! The Nescafe is free...!
Click to expand...

Sadly this will be the twenty third such annual invitation I shall decline. For twenty of those, either working at/ managing/ owning Overseas Recognised Training Centres, I took an early decision to attend only when they invent a Star Trek transporter. :)
 
They brought in a rule about 5 years ago that to maintain certain appointments you need to attend at least one every 5 years. I don’t think I’m going to get out of attending this one. What really hacks me off is that they are always held in the south of England somewhere and not close to convenient public transport. So for anyone in the north has big travel costs and time on top of the skyrocketing conference and accommodation costs. Fair enough, the majority of the RYA is on the south coast but it would be nice if once every 5 years they held it in the north of England or even Scotland but they’ve said none of the southerners would attend. Says a lot about the RYA and the members involved in teaching in the south.
 
capnsensible said:
For twenty of those, either working at/ managing/ owning Overseas Recognised Training Centres, I took an early decision to attend only when they invent a Star Trek transporter. :)
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'Beam me up, Scotty!'

Many a time and oft have I wished - indeed, prayed - for just such a device! But not yet in the context of escaping an RYA Conference..... :rolleyes:
 
It looks to me that the RYA has gone the same way that the BSAC went 30 odd years ago. Being the recognised body for their sport goes to their head, they pull qualification certification from club level and centralise it in the name of uniformity then farm it out to commercial schools.
 
ctva said:
They brought in a rule about 5 years ago that to maintain certain appointments you need to attend at least one every 5 years. I don’t think I’m going to get out of attending this one. What really hacks me off is that they are always held in the south of England somewhere and not close to convenient public transport. So for anyone in the north has big travel costs and time on top of the skyrocketing conference and accommodation costs. Fair enough, the majority of the RYA is on the south coast but it would be nice if once every 5 years they held it in the north of England or even Scotland but they’ve said none of the southerners would attend. Says a lot about the RYA and the members involved in teaching in the south.
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I went to one at that Cumbrae Centre on the Clyde.......in about 1990 something......:ambivalence:

Ah yeah, and your south is my north! ;)
 
capnsensible said:
I went to one at that Cumbrae Centre on the Clyde.......in about 1990 something......:ambivalence:

Ah yeah, and your south is my north! ;)
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We probably met then!

That was when the heid guys from RYA came to the RYAS conference (we actually sailed, powerboated and other stuff as well as talked, the good old days) and gave the party line, updates and cpd stuff. They still do every year and it is the same as given at the national conference but as I said 5 years ago they decided we had to hear the same stuff down south for it to count. Smacked of just pushing more attendees for their talk only conference.
 
ctva said:
.....5 years ago they decided we had to hear the same stuff down south for it to count. Smacked of just pushing more attendees for their talk only conference.
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That's probably because so many Members of RYA Council are green-wellied 'huntin, shootin, fishin' land-owning types from Gloucestershire.... who are on first-name terms with that other exclusive country set, the Windsor-Laurences and their acolytes around Tetbury/Stroud.
 
When I started sailing I joined, mainly because, IIRC, the ICC was free to members and little different from an annual subscription to non-members. I quickly decided that the RNLI and my local inshore lifeboat (GAFIRS) were more worthy recipients, on the basis that I was pretty sure I could do without the RYA, but only hoped I'd never need a lifeboat.
 
zoidberg said:
That's probably because so many Members of RYA Council are green-wellied 'huntin, shootin, fishin' land-owning types from Gloucestershire.... who are on first-name terms with that other exclusive country set, the Windsor-Laurences and their acolytes around Tetbury/Stroud.
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There are other similar organizations to join it seems (Cruising Association being one of them), with that said if you think you can better why don't you start up your own organization? It's really not as hard to set up as it sounds, it's keeping it going that's the tricky bit.

I do think we're in dire need of an organization (particularly in South Wales) that will help the disadvantaged get back onto the water. That said, the RNLI (as Stemar points out just above) should really just be a standard subscription even if only £2 per annum. Definitely worth it.
 
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ctva said:
We probably met then!

That was when the heid guys from RYA came to the RYAS conference (we actually sailed, powerboated and other stuff as well as talked, the good old days) and gave the party line, updates and cpd stuff. They still do every year and it is the same as given at the national conference but as I said 5 years ago they decided we had to hear the same stuff down south for it to count. Smacked of just pushing more attendees for their talk only conference.
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Small world! At the time, the Sailing Centre at the Clyde Submarine Base was licensed for shore based training. Two of us were invited to attend the conference, hosted, if I remember correctly, by James Stevens. What a guy!
 
ctva said:
They brought in a rule about 5 years ago that to maintain certain appointments you need to attend at least one every 5 years. I don’t think I’m going to get out of attending this one. What really hacks me off is that they are always held in the south of England somewhere and not close to convenient public transport. So for anyone in the north has big travel costs and time on top of the skyrocketing conference and accommodation costs. Fair enough, the majority of the RYA is on the south coast but it would be nice if once every 5 years they held it in the north of England or even Scotland but they’ve said none of the southerners would attend. Says a lot about the RYA and the members involved in teaching in the south.
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Not sure if this is the right sort of thing to meet the “5 years” currency aspect you refer to, but there certainly still is an RYA Scotland Instructors event each spring ........ https://www.rya.org.uk/scotland/events/Pages/instructor-conference.aspx
 
capnsensible said:
Small world! At the time, the Sailing Centre at the Clyde Submarine Base was licensed for shore based training. Two of us were invited to attend the conference, hosted, if I remember correctly, by James Stevens. What a guy!
Click to expand...

It still is and yes, JS was really good at the RYA. I enjoyed many a liquid session on Ospray when it was brought to Cumbrae.

dunedin said:
Not sure if this is the right sort of thing to meet the “5 years” currency aspect you refer to, but there certainly still is an RYA Scotland Instructors event each spring ........ https://www.rya.org.uk/scotland/events/Pages/instructor-conference.aspx
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Unfortunately not accepted, or even the Trainers/Coaches one where we still get wet. The RYAS is still a good event though.
 
I became a CI in my retirement and went to my first conference last year. I’ve also received the email invite to next years.

I was somewhat surprised by the behaviour of many candidates attending. Especially during the graveyard shift presentations, a very high proportion of the audience (imho) were lost to their phone OCD. I found it a huge distraction so I won’t bother going again.

I submitted post conference feedback suggesting something along the lines of having posters displayed “as a courtesy to the presenter and your colleagues, please turn off your electronic device and take any calls outside of the auditorium”.
 
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