Woollahra Sailing Club acknowledges that we are on the land of the Birrabirragal people, the traditional custodians of the land. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging.
Volunteering
Duty roster and Volunteering
Volunteering is fun and a great opportunity to paractice and improve your skills. Volunteers often comment on how much they enjoyed the experience and how much they learnt about the Club, racing, equipment or sailing in general.
Volunteering is the life blood of the Club. Please volunteer to keep your club going. The Club needs volunteers to deliver Club racing and major events.
Any questions please email sail@woollahrasailingclub.org.au.
Club Racing
This page concentrates on Club racing. However, much of what is produced here is relevant for other events.
You can nominate your volunteer day(s) via the members portal at
Woollahra Sailing Club : Duty roster. There are many roster roles published. If some of the essential roles are not filled by volunteers, staff will be employed to cover those roles.
Parents may volunteer on behalf of their children. This is particularly relevant for Optimist and 420 sailors.
Some roles require course completion or qualifications. You can update your qualifications via the members portal at Woollahra Sailing Club : Profile
Volunteer roles and qualifications
* Duty Officer: Supervise yard and ramp. Monitor radio messages. Call ambulance if required. No qualification needed. The role description can be found at Duty officer role guidelines
* Race Officer: Australian Sailing "Club Race Officer" qualification or higher required. This is an online course. For more details please see Find a course - Australian Sailing
* Race Officer assistant: No special qualifications required. Knowledge of race start and finish proceedure desirable. Main activity is to assist race officer with flags and recording finish. The online course above is a good place to start.
* Café assistant: Assist Gigi in the café
* On water safety and mark lay: These roles require significant experience and/or completion of the following courses:
- * Safety boat operator: Australian Sailing "Safety Boat Operator" course completion or equivalent. For more details please see Powerboat - Australian Sailing - Resources (sailingresources.org.au)
- * Mark lay: It is desirable that volunteers have a boat licence and have completed the Australian Sailing "Mark Laying" course. This is a free online course that can be found here: Mark Laying Course - Australian Sailing - Resources (sailingresources.org.au)
Volunteer briefings
* Saturday volunteer briefing at 2:00 pm
* Sunday volunteer briefing at 12:00 midday.
Safety documentation
Members, staff, volunteers and visitors are encouraged to review the club
safety documents. These documents are updated from time to time as required.
Why is this important
- It is in the Club's interest and those of each sailing member to improve our collective skill set. The online race officer course takes only a few hours to complete.
- Volunteering is an opportunity to learn new skills: mark laying, start boat, and rescue boat. The overwhelming feedback from people who volunteer - often or occasionally - is they enjoy it, are proud of what they have done and glad they supported the club
- Volunteering is good for Club culture. It is satisfying to work together, get racing done then enjoy a sausage sandwich and the sun set. In addition, it helps people understand what is involved in keeping the Club going. This is very important for a Members owned institution.
- In the not-too-distant past, circa 2014, all Club racing at Woollahra was entirely volunteer run. Many people who remember those days feel the Club has lost something with the diminishment of the volunteer culture. Volunteers still run many dinghy clubs around Sydney, Australia, and the world.
- We host many regattas. For most of these regattas the Class associations would like us to reduce our regatta fees via use of volunteers. They have this belief because this is the case at many other Clubs. We have been criticised because of the lack of our volunteer depth.
In may 2022 the Board of Woollahra Sailing Club made the following decision
The aim of the fee for those who do not volunteer is to encourage members who participate in club racing to contribute to the club racing organisation or cost.
Action: Add a $100 cost to the club member registration for the summer race series. This excludes the Junior (ie no fee for juniors). This covers winter series (ie no fee for winter series).
If you volunteer for a race day, you receive $50 off your May renewal. You can volunteer for multiple days and each day is $50 but a max discount of $100 (off next year's renewal). This is available to all adult sailing members not just registered for Club racing.
Eligibility for the racing members for the $100 off you May renewal $50 per race day volunteering role.
Last updated 13:26 on 27 March 2023