Save Weir Wood Sailing Club

[B27]

Of course, it could just as easily be the demographic in the area not being traditional yachting types. The RYA have a mandate to increase the reach of sailing so they should be disproportionately supporting such clubs while providing less support to the self sustaining ones. Of course, it's run by committee so the reality is that people go where the success is and take credit where it's available.

Traditional Yachting Types? It's a mediocre little pond inland.

The demographic in that area includes tens of thousands of people who've sailed in the past.
These inland pond clubs managed to attract loads of people last century, but the hard fact is that dinghy sailing for the masses was a fad which peaked over 50 years ago, when lots of ordinary people could afford brand new dinghies and wanted to build own and sail them.
The world has changed.
There's a limit to what the RYA or anyone else can do to prop up clubs who are struggling with the reality of the 21st century.

I know dinghy sailors who live not a million miles from Weir Wood, they want to be racing Lasers on the sea at Portland or something, not bobbing around a pond surrounded by trees.

What exactly should the RYA be doing?

 

[RunAgroundHard]

... What exactly should the RYA be doing?

That is the million dollar question.

 

[lustyd]

What exactly should the RYA be doing?

Appealing to people who don't want to arse about in lasers at Portland for trophies. Racing isn't the only type of sailing, whether the RYA believes so or not. If they don't want to work with other kinds of sailing then they need to step aside and let someone fill the gap. They won't, because nobody ever wants to relinquish power, however tenuous.
There are an enormous number of people who'd just like to mess about in a dinghy on the water for a few hours. I don't want to be a member of anything and I don't feel a burning desire to compete. Every RYA centre I've ever been to has provided the opposite of my needs so perhaps there's a place to start. While we're at it, I also don't see a need for a committee to run every little pond either.

 

[The Q]

Hmm, seems my club is doing something right then
Paddleboards yep,
Kayakers, yep,
Radio controlled boats, yep
Racing on every Sunday, most bank holidays, quite a few Saturdays plus regatta week.
Wild swimming, you're free to do so dodging the motorboats.
Moorings ( motor and sail) and dinghy park , yep,
Rya sailing school , yep,
Non racers welcome, yep
Fishermen, yep, some join just to use our car park and slipway.
Social events, at least once a month

Membership as cheap as we can get it, about £150 for a family.
Oh and this Saturday is "try / discover sailing" as part of a boat show.

 

[Daydream believer]

Like cyclists it only takes a few!

Possibly some research is required into Lycra and Wetsuit materials to see if they affect the behaviour of normally reasonable people….

Seems like you should add the effects of forum membership to that whilst you are at it

 

[st599]

Most sailing clubs are not facing up to the main issue that all outdoors pursuit clubs are seeing. Many youngsters are time poor, don't want to be a member of anything, they don't want to be on a duty roster and they don't want to sign up for things weeks in advance - they may need to work.

They want flexibility, they want pay to play, they want to try a few different things and repeat the best experiences when they can afford to and when they can get time off work, not when a club calendar says they should and they definitely don't want ownership.

Things like Meetup, where you decide on Thursday what you're doing that weekend are booming.

 

[xyachtdave]

Most sailing clubs are not facing up to the main issue that all outdoors pursuit clubs are seeing. Many youngsters are time poor, don't want to be a member of anything, they don't want to be on a duty roster and they don't want to sign up for things weeks in advance - they may need to work.

They want flexibility, they want pay to play, they want to try a few different things and repeat the best experiences when they can afford to and when they can get time off work, not when a club calendar says they should and they definitely don't want ownership.

Things like Meetup, where you decide on Thursday what you're doing that weekend are booming.

I'd agree with all the points you raise. Our club insists on sending invoices out in the first week of January, slap bang when many are a little financially pressed, haven't been near the boat for 3 months and aren't planning on using it again until at least April.

In recent years there's been some pigeon steps towards paying by direct debit but they still want 50% by the end of January. That's a deal breaker for many.

Appealing to people who don't want to arse about in lasers at Portland for trophies. Racing isn't the only type of sailing, whether the RYA believes so or not.

The last time I looked at the RYA website Canal Boats appeared to be in fashion, so I'm sure there's a 'Tow Path Canal Master Inland' race series in the pipeline.

 

[B27]

Most sailing clubs are not facing up to the main issue that all outdoors pursuit clubs are seeing. Many youngsters are time poor, don't want to be a member of anything, they don't want to be on a duty roster and they don't want to sign up for things weeks in advance - they may need to work.

They want flexibility, they want pay to play, they want to try a few different things and repeat the best experiences when they can afford to and when they can get time off work, not when a club calendar says they should and they definitely don't want ownership.

Things like Meetup, where you decide on Thursday what you're doing that weekend are booming.

Some truth in all of that, but don't forget the world s not just about 'youngsters'.
Older people have money and are a market.

But making a proper business case out of 'casual participants' is quite hard work.
It means paid staff to make it happen, investment in boats.
You've then got to fill those boats a high % of the time in order to balance the books.
There is such market but it's not huge and it's overlapped by training and racing operations.

How much will the casual market bear? People will pay £100 for a day's training, but I don't think there's a huge market of people begging to pay £20 an hour to drift around Weir Wood.
A laser costs £7000. A paddleboard or kayak costs about £300.
You can more easily rent out the paddle boards and kayaks to a wider range of people for about the same hourly rate.

 

[lustyd]

But making a proper business case out of 'casual participants' is quite hard work.
It means paid staff to make it happen, investment in boats.
You've then got to fill those boats a high % of the time in order to balance the books.
There is such market but it's not huge and it's overlapped by training and racing operations.

How much will the casual market bear? People will pay £100 for a day's training, but I don't think there's a huge market of people begging to pay £20 an hour to drift around Weir Wood.

Have you done market research? Perhaps there is a huge unmet demand and actually the club is preventing it from being met by a proper PAYG business model where people can just show up and have fun. There are only so many lakes, after all, and a lot of them are clogged up with clubs!

I'm not arguing to close the club btw, simply presenting another side of the argument

 

[ylop]

Lots of people will always have lots of advice about clubs diversifying and catering for new trendy 'sports' like paddleboarding and wild swimming. It was the same when windsurfing/boardsailing came along in the 80s.
I've been a member of a few clubs, due to moving around with work, and the clubs which remain strong seem to be those which are focussed on racing, and those which provide yacht moorings.

What the racing clubs have is a programme of structured activities - people often assume that means people want racing, but actually whilst some so, theres a massive survivor bias there. You've no idea how many people young or old would actually just enjoy learning to sail at a leisurely pace in a boat that costs a fraction of a race spec boat, as part of a wider group / programme / activity. The reservoir is not very big so you have to start getting creative about how to add to that (perhaps not just sailing, perhaps not just at the reservoir) etc...

Most sailing clubs are not facing up to the main issue that all outdoors pursuit clubs are seeing. Many youngsters are time poor, don't want to be a member of anything, they don't want to be on a duty roster and they don't want to sign up for things weeks in advance - they may need to work.

Ageed. And you are right its not just sailing, or even just outdoor pursuits. I don't think its (1) necessarily just youngsters who this applies to; (2) that they don't want to be a "member" - its more that membership isn't an obvious option for them; (3) many clubs and their duty rosters etc are not particularly welcoming, unintentionally little cliques, and full of rules and expectations; (4) many of the duty roles are poorly trained, carry a load of hassle or responsibility etc. Committees are inevitably made up of club insiders who by selection bias are the people who like or tolerate how the club has always worked.

They want flexibility, they want pay to play, they want to try a few different things and repeat the best experiences when they can afford to and when they can get time off work, not when a club calendar says they should and they definitely don't want ownership.

100%. Things like race series can add interest to a reservoir, but if you want to take it seriously it needs to become a regular commitment. Even if we assume most people are available at weekends - most clubs are not on the water 9-5 sat and sun throughout the season. If you did own - you'd be restricting yourself to using when the club has the critical mass to open.

Have you done market research? Perhaps there is a huge unmet demand and actually the club is preventing it from being met by a proper PAYG business model where people can just show up and have fun. There are only so many lakes, after all, and a lot of them are clogged up with clubs!

I'm not arguing to close the club btw, simply presenting another side of the argument

I'm sure there IS a market for this. The market is not to people who are members of sailing clubs which creates a viscous catch 22 situation. Does the club exists to support the sport (as you might say the RYA does) or to provide stuff for its existing members...

 

[lustyd]

Does the club exists to support the sport (as you might say the RYA does) or to provide stuff for its existing members...

Existing members, of course. But the question here would seem to be whether that best serves the local community or whether the owner might better serve them by replacing the club with a business.

 

[B27]

Have you done market research? Perhaps there is a huge unmet demand and actually the club is preventing it from being met by a proper PAYG business model where people can just show up and have fun. There are only so many lakes, after all, and a lot of them are clogged up with clubs!

I'm not arguing to close the club btw, simply presenting another side of the argument

Yes, our club had a pretty serious look at a number of existing and failed PAYG and boat hire operations.

The problem is days like today. It's peeing down, people are not going to 'just show up and have fun', you still have to pay rent and salaries and all that.

There are in fact, quite a lot of lakes.
There are also a number of PAYG businesses which do OK. But it's not a huge market.
Even the paddleboard hire/experience/whatever market looks to be saturated, and with that, you are competing with businesses whose only overheads are a few cheap boards and a Transit van.

There may be some unmet demand, or demand which can be created by adding sailing to a holiday park venue (like Butlins used to have some Mirrors on a pond ? )

But my point was more that there isn't that much demand for inland sailing clubs, compared to 1975.