Sailing Events
SAILING PROGRAMME for 2008
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Social Programme 2008
Bar Opening Hours:
Wednesday 19.30-23.00
Friday 18.00-21.00
Sunday 12.00-15.00
Duty Man Roster
Your News & Views
Please send your stories, opinions and photos to the webeditor
21 Oct 06
Open Forum
All members' clubs go through cycles of vigorous activity followed by quieter times. Dee Sailing Club is currently in the less active phase of the cycle. The number of boats turning out on a Sunday is markedly down from only a couple of years ago. Bar takings are down. Finding the next generation of Flag Officers is not proving to be easy.
It's not all gloom though: the Dart 18 fleet has a number of sailors regularly taking part in the UKIDA TT circuit, achieving very creditable results (typically top 10) and the fastcat fleet has several sailors competing nationally. The shining light of the club is the success of our Junior sailors, who are notching up top 5 results in fleets of 120 Optimists. It's not too fanciful to suggest we might have some future Olympic sailors in the club, such is their rapid progress.
This success is, paradoxically, partly responsible for the current decline in numbers in our Sunday club racing. Sailors travelling to events can't be in two places at once. Junior sailors competing in open events need their dads to act as team manager and driver, so dad can't be on the Dee on Sunday.
The club has had slow periods before, and at times the decline has been much deeper. We can't let the club go into terminal decline, so I believe the time is right for a top-to-bottom re-appraisal of what the members want from their club, in an effort to reverse the downward spiral and grow the club to new heights of success.
Many club members have approached me with ideas to revive the club's fortunes and some of these ideas are quite radical, whilst some of them seem blindingly obvious. At the October Sailing Committee meeting it was decided to throw the floor open to the club's members to bring forward their ideas and to say what they want from their sailing club. Consequently, the Commodore has called an Open Forum meeting where members will get an opportunity to put their ideas in front of the rest of the Flag Officers and the membership.
This will not be a Sailing Committee meeting, as previously reported. It will be open to all members of the club.
In advance of the Forum we'd like to collect member's ideas and collate them so that the evening has some structure and a good chance of being productive. Details of where to send your ideas are on the Open Forum page. The collected ideas will be posted up on that page (anonymously) so that others can see and discuss them.
Please come to the Open Forum on 7 November and make your views known. It's your club - what do you want to do with it?
Michael Johnson
Rear Commodore (Sailing)
Open Forum page
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