Only the fittest will survive
Magnus Wheatley picks up on one of our favourite topics, of once magical sailing clubs denying how people’s approaches to leisure time have now fundamentally changed – especially among teenagers – then wondering why they are brushing away the tumbleweed while the club is steadily going broke
There’s an uncomfortable feeling that in the UK and other sailing nations, sailing clubs of every kind are struggling. Partici- pation numbers are down and it’s one heck of a conundrum to solve in a sport polarised by performance. Show any vague interest in sailing
online, particularly on social media, and suddenly your timeline is filled with high- performance yachting at the extremes. But down at the grass roots it’s a very different scene with a high cost of entry even for the most basic of boats.
50 SEAHORSE Look at the dinghy fleets at most clubs
and the traditional classes are sparsely represented. Yes, there are occasional local bright spots, but here in the UK the national trend is sadly one of decline. Are the clubs to blame? Have they been
too slow to react? Has the landscape changed so irrevocably that mergers are inevitable or worse? Is it just a matter of time before the receivers have to be called in? Many of us can look back through rose-
tinted lenses at a misspent youth in the dinghy park and clubhouse. On the water for endless hours away
from parental supervision, summer regattas, later the camaraderie of small yacht racing with a great crew, the chance to go on bigger, better and faster boats, the buzz of the bar after racing, the wait for the results, the promise to do better next week. And that’s all great… and it still exists
in parts. But what’s been coming out of left-field and head-on like a freight-train is societal change, massively increased opportunity across multiple sports, and a maelstrom of red tape, increasing costs, safeguarding measures and a totally bewil- dering, base question of how to get more enthusiastic bodies through the door?
The ‘next generation’ is a very tricky
audience to capture and what worked before is unlikely to work in the future. That’s not to say that there aren’t some superbly well-run clubs up and down the country that know their specific audiences and serve them well. Those, and I very much include the sister
club of this publication, work incredibly hard to keep their audience on point, identify their needs and relentlessly push forward – often with volunteers doing much of the legwork. All hail to them, they are specialists, do a great job and no doubt you will be able to identify the same wherever you live in the world. But for every success right now many
clubs are living way beyond their means and facing the inevitable or looking for a financial angel to bail them out… and they won’t appear without a vision sold to them of a much brighter future. High-profile club mergers are back on
the cards (particularly on the UK south coast) and begging letters for funds, mostly for building and fixed cost support, are circulating against an impossible backdrop where sticking-plaster solutions can only ever last so long. Recent club failures in the
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