Flushing Sailing Club (FSC) volunteers helped build a new clubhouse during the pandemic and now the team is growing.
In spring 2020, just as the club was coming to the end of a major fundraising campaign and lockdown began, a sterling group of volunteers got to work on the build, headed by trustee Dave Owens and retired architect David Mitchell. The lockdown turned out to be a big benefit, because building could go ahead much more efficiently without the club being in use. In addition, the team ensured that they embraced modern technology, using Zoom and social media more than ever before and persuading people outside their comfort zone to do things in different ways because of the pandemic.
Now the clubhouse is open, Commodore Gaye Slater explains the effect that the project has had on the club’s core activity, running racing: “We’ve now got a superb and well-equipped race office (thanks to very generous donors and sponsors) and a growing race office team who have formed a race office WhatsApp group too so that they can consult each other quickly.
“The lovely new race office is fantastic to sit in, and can get crowded as a result! Some of the longer standing volunteers are mentoring newcomers. We recently welcomed a younger one who’d never done RO duty before, and while he was making his decisions, he had two other ROs popping in to check how he was doing! Experienced ROs are coming in to help, and we’ve asked all the skippers to volunteer for the rota – they get an automatic first on the results if they do a race!”
The new clubhouse has become a popular venue for people, which has put a lot of stress on the small group of volunteers running the bar. The club has therefore made the decision to pay some students, and a young Ukranian refugee living in the village, to do this, focusing its volunteer force in the activity where they are most needed: “It’s a win/win situation,” says Gaye. “The students and refugee get the opportunity to earn a little money, while we make best use of the volunteers’ experience in the race office. Some of the students end up going sailing too, so it’s a way of introducing them to the sport and they may well become volunteers in the future.”
For years, as a small club, FSC had a very laborious membership system and accounts, but Gaye says that they are now working to simplify things in order to make it easier for volunteers to get involved: “We have a new way of banking, and we’ve got two strong new trustees with skillsets that are going to be important. We have an amazing team and a vibrant club now – we were finalists in the RYA Club of the Year 2021, and we’ll be back as entrants again.”
Photo of Paul Evans in the race office, credit John Heath
