Pick Your Own Duties
Your club depends,
for the operation of organised dinghy racing, on the involvement of members in
carrying out Race Duties. Club Racing forms the core of the Club's activities,
without which the Club would probably soon wither away. For this reason the Club
requires, as a condition of membership, that all members will carry out Race
Duties as assigned. However it is understood that some members do not wish to
race or race infrequently and such members are asked to do fewer Duties than
regular racers. In practice this means that regular racers are asked to do three
Duties per year, while non racers are called on once or twice.
Duties are assigned
in this fashion: The Duty Secretary maintains a list of current members with
details of members’ suitability and qualification for the various tasks (ie.
Race Officer, Assistant Race Officer, Safety Boat Coxswain and Safety Boat
Crew). The Club has a policy that Safety Boat Coxswains should have RYA
Powerboat Level Two Certificate. When
the programme for the coming season is available (October or November), an empty
Duty Roster is posted in the Clubhouse. Members can then fill in their own
preferred dates for the coming season. This list remains posted until the Roster
is finalised in April. The Duty Secretary then fills in the empty dates
by working through the list of members in alphabetic order on a continuous basis
(ie. not starting at "A" each year but carrying on from last year.)
Members are then
sent a reminder via Royal Mail, about three weeks before their assigned Duty;
along with a list of contact details for all other members. So they may arrange
swaps if neccessary. The Duty Secretary will not in normal circumstances be
involved in rearranging duties as members are asked to be responsible themselves
to find a willing substitute if they are unable to perform the allotted duty.
The reason for this is that otherwise the work of the Duty Secretary becomes
very onerous, and to this end the name of the Duty Secretary is not published.
This method of
assigning Duties has been arrived at over years of practice and we strive to be
equitable as possible. But if you have any comments or suggestions as to how we
could improve the system please put them to any Committee Member for
consideration (or better still, attend the AGM and have a say there.)
I hope this has
been informative and encourage members to select their own dates as described.
Yours sincerely,
the Duty Secretary.