The club has many strings to its bow. As well as a training centre and a very active cruiser membership, over the last few years the club has seen an increase in members taking up other watersports such as paddle boarding but using the club membership as their base.
One of the key identities of the club is the very popular racing scene, whether this is club Sunday (and Saturday) racing or the range of opens and regattas the club has in the calendar. In order to make these happen a number of roles need to be in place and to provide these, we ask all sailing members (including family members) as part of their membership agreement to sign up to 3 duties per year.
We do this on an “honour” based system, expecting members to sign up and as a general rule we do not check but with the reduced number of members who have signed up this year we are finding it hard to run events without the appropriate cover. Whilst appreciating that this does take away members sailing time, it is part of your agreement of club membership to do 3 duties per year.
Feedback from members indicated that one reason people were not signing up was because they did not understand the duty roles or how to sign up, so hopefully this will help a little.
Each club racing event requires a Race Officer and in order to allow people to develop their skills they can be assisted by an Assistant Race Officer. Bigger open events tend to run with both a Race Officer and Assistant. Out on the water, club racing requires a minimum of one safety boat (normally a large RIB) driven by the “cox” and an assistant (safety boat crew) in the boat to provide hands on assistance. For open events we tend to run multiple safety boats. A full understanding of the roles can be found below:
Race Officer – Manages signing on and race briefing where required, ensures safety boat is ready and n the water prior to race start, sets course for the race, runs race start sequence, makes decision during race regarding early starts / shortened course etc, manages race end sequence and records race times, manages protests, has final decision on conditions as viable / safe to race, provides results information
Assistant Race Officer – supports the Race Officer and carries out any delegated duties under the Race Officers direction. We would expect that after 2 sessions as an Assistant Race Officer you could be able to do a 3rd duty as Race Officer on your own for a club racing event
Safety Boat Cox (must be PB2 qualified) – prepares / checks and launches (and recovers) the safety boat in readiness for racing, checks course prior to start and reports to Race Officer, keeps a watch for on course hazards such as swimmers and other vessels, keeps a watch on all racing boats and attends scene in the event of difficulty, directs safety boat crew to support incidents whilst maintaining safe control of safety boat
Safety Boat Crew – must be dressed to be ready to go into the water and be prepared to provide assistance in the event of a helm / crew in difficulty either from within the RIB or in the water. Typical situations would be holding the mast head to allow the boat to be manoeuvred head to wind, entering the water and aiding a tired sailor right the boat in a capsize or full turtle scenario, freeing up trapped lines, preparing a boat to be towed etc. This will all be done under the direction of either the sailing boat helm or the safety boat Cox depending on the situation.
The club manages it duty rota using a system called Dutyman. This is basically an on-line calendar which allows you to see all of the events, the duty positions, which ones have been taken and for the vacant ones allows you to volunteer. If you are unable to log on, please contact a committee member via the whatapp group to get your ID checked,
If you have not covered your duties yet and are not PB2 qualified our immediate need will be for Safety Boat Crew. If you feel that you would rather stay shore side, volunteer for Assistant Race Officer with a view to doing your last duty as Race Officer.
If you have any questions on this, please reach out to a member of the committee or contact myself via whatapp so I can point you in the right direction.
Rob Sloggett (Publicity Officer)
Bala Sailing Club 