King George Sailing Club

Duties

‘Duties’ are an essential part of any volunteer run sailing club. They are of vital importance to enable members to sail safely and to enjoy racing.

Every adult member of KGSC has to perform two duties a year. You are responsible for volunteering for dates convenient to you and making sure you get your duties in before the year end. Those who do not fulfill their duty allocation will need to pay a fee of £32 per duty missed.

Despite the ominous sounding name duties are actually quite fun. There’s a lot of satisfaction to be had by working as a team to facilitate the enjoyment of others. Learning new skills keeps your brain active and opens you up to new possibilities.

To sign up for your duties, head to the membership webpage, login and then select ‘portal’. On the menu, select ‘Duty Roster’. You can then filter by duty type and event type. Select the ‘Volunteer’ button when you have chosen a duty. As simple as that.

The current duties include Race Officer, Race Officer Assistant, Rescue Leader and Rescue Helper.

Race Officers are in charge of the race process, they set the course, administer the starting sequences and judge the finish.

Race Officer Assistants are there to assist the Race Officer with their activities, including mapping out the course, raising and lowering flags and noting down lap/finish times.

It sounds complicated, and it is quite - BUT - this is club racing, not a national series, and racers will be grateful to anyone who helps out and enables them to get on the water. There will always be advice offered about course choice (usually too much of it…)

There is a great resource from the RYA on running club racing. A short course giving an introduction to racing, how to lay a course, the start, controlling the race and the finish. I strongly urge all to take a look.

https://www.rya.org.uk/assets/rya/apps/racing/crm/index.html#/

Rescue Leader, should be someone competent to drive a rescue boat (ideally with RYA Powerboat Level 2). Your main role is to rescue people from the water if it becomes necessary. It would be useful to know how to recover boats, but that is of secondary importance. You will also need to know how to launch and put away the powerboat.

Rescue Helpers are there to assist the Rescue Leader, preparing the rescue boats and equipment, assisting with rescues and cleaning rescue equipment.

Both of these roles may involve getting wet, and most likely cold. Come suitably dressed.

For your first duty at King George Sailing Club we recommend that you put yourself down for Assistant Race Officer or Rescue Helper. You might find you love it! If you are nervous you could always come along on another Sunday to watch or bring yourself to the end of the Better Sailing session on a Saturday afternoon to learn more about our powerboat procedures.