Yachting
Don't forget the sailor
Oliver Stewart
So, the Royal Yachting Association is giving up the battle. "Compul sory registration of craft," says its
President, "would seem likely to be implemented in the future. We are
considering the possibility of the Association being the body which would undertake the registration." Many, perhaps most, of the Association's individual members, gathered together this week for the annual Boat Show, have been paying their subscriptions (0.00) in the hope that it would fight hard and uncompromisingly against compulsory craft registration and other such inroads into boating freedom. Such members get little else for their money. Yet now it seems that the Association is not only giving up the battle; but that it is making ready to go over to the enemy. It is a miserable capitulation.
The Association appeals for more members. At a recent count membership was 41,000 of which 1,565 were clubs. By now the total may be about 50,000. Yet if the individual member compares the services he obtains with those given hirn by the motoring organisations, associate membership of the Royal Automobile Club for instance, he has cause for dissatisfaction.
We are aware of the fine work done by the Royal Yachting Association in the competitive, particularly the Olympic, fields. We admire its complicated, legalistic activities in the worlds of international rules and of racing protests; we approve of its authority in record breaking. But the RAC does similar work in motoring on a larger scale and still finds time to look after its individual associate members and to give them a good return for their money.
One of the RYA's troubles is that it places too much emphasis upon competition. It assumes that nearly all worth-while sailing is racing and that nearly all racing is a club affair. So its services are geared to clubs rather than to individual members. The small boat sailor who is less interested in racing than in cruising or just pottering about is left on his own. He obtains a few pamphlets from the RYA every year — most of them concerned with racing — and that is all.
Meanwhile he helps to pay for such things as the National Yacht Racing Centre and he is asked to contribute to charities such as the Seamanship Foundation although he is not told why his membership of the RYA should involve him in such matters.
Yachtsmen, and here I am including those thousands who do not race and who do not regard club membership as an essential part of their sailing activities, need at least one strong and energetic representative organisation — an organisation, in particular, which is not primarily government-oriented.
The RYA does admirable work;
but it does seem to be governmentoriented and it does concentrate too much of its attention upon racing and upon clubs and too little upon individual members. Perhaps in its centenary it will see that it cannot be a good servant to sailing men in general and at the same time a good servant to government departments.
The clubs can look after themselves. The individual sailor, like the individual motorist, greatly needs a strong organisation to support him.
Oliver Stewart's books include Bad Sailing Made Good
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