Volunteers – A Review of the Last Decade

Volunteers – A Review of the

As this article is being written we are all eagerly looking forward to 22 April when we hope we will all be allowed to start to sail (and race) again, and the Sailing Office and the Club’s Race Officers are starting to plan the resources needed to run racing. In anticipation of a return to activity both as a sailor and a volunteer on a committee boat, I’ve done a bit of a ‘wander down memory lane’ to reflect on how the role of race management volunteers at the Club has evolved over the last decade or so.

WORDS: LUCY SUTRO, VICE COMMODORE | IMAGES: GUY NOWELL

Anumber of factors influenced the growth of the volunteer base: in 2010 the Club was awarded the bid for hosting the 2013 Flying Fifteen World Championships, in 2012 the Race Management SubCommittee was formed under the Sailing Committee and in the same year the Club arranged for Rob Lamb, an International Race Officer to come to Hong Kong to run a series of seminars training those members interested in learning how to become a Race Officer. The combination of these factors lit a spark of interest in many who wanted to have the opportunity to help the Club in the running of these events. I was one of those individuals.

By the time the Fifteen Worlds took place in October 2013, the list of individuals who were involved as volunteers had grown from a handful of names to over 100 people – doing jobs both on the water (committee boats, mark laying boats, safety boats, jury boats) and onshore (measurement, registration, launch and retrieve). At that event it worked

Volunteers – A Review of the Last Decade

out that you need roughly the same number of volunteers as there are competitors; and that ratio was also true for the subsequent Worlds.

The next few years were busy ones with the arrival in 2014 of the annual Hong Kong Race Week in its current format, the Etchells Worlds in 2015, the Optimist Asians in 2016, the 29er Worlds in 2017 and the Hong Kong stop over for the Volvo Ocean Race in 2018. By the end of the 2018-19 season the volunteers list had grown to nearly 1,000 names and at the end of the last season it was over 1,200 names long. These individuals give up over 1,000 days a year to come and help at our events and in a year with international events that number can go up to 1,800 volunteer days.

With the growth in the number of people who were keen to help, the Sailing Office drafted in the skills of both members and members of staff to help train people in all aspects of the race management role; from how to log wind readings, how to lay a mark (in the right place) and regular safety boat training. As the size of the base grew, so did standards within the base and Hong Kong now has two International Race Officers (Charlie Manzoni and Brenda Davies), two International Jurors (Tom Sheppard and Ben Harding), one International Umpire (David Fan) and one International Measurer (Patrick Lam). In addition, Bonnie Cheng, Inge Strompf-Jepsen, David Norton and Barry Truhol. are Hong Kong National Race officers. All of these individuals are more than generous with their time and knowledge and frequently can be found helping as race officials or jurors at our larger events.

Alongside this investment in people there has also been an investment in equipment. From that same point in 2010, the Club acquired a second

committee boat (Hector Ross) and the Protector (Teddy Chien) which is used as our main safety boat and replaced the Club’s main committee boat (Kellett VIII). The Club is also in the process of replacing the elderly fleet of Cheoy Lees. There has also been significant investment in expanding the fleet of RIBs which are used for safety boats and, for larger events like Hong Kong Race Week, for mark laying and as jury boats. In addition, there is a regular replacement programme for marks, anchors, warps, flags, wind reading instruments and all of the other equipment needed by the race management team.

While this article has concentrated on the sailing race management volunteers, the same degree of growth has been seen on the rowing and paddling side of the Club; and particularly in recent years it’s been great to see sailors helping out at rowing and paddling events and vice versa. Becoming involved as a race management volunteer has been particularly rewarding for many of us and some abiding friendships have been made; normally cemented over a glass back on shore where we celebrate a job well done or commiserate each other over wind shifts, failure to remember a race management procedure or just plain old equipment failure.

If you want to get involved in any aspect of volunteering, that would be fantastic and all you have to do is talk to the Sailing or Rowing Offices and let them know you want to get involved and help out.

Hopefully our next season will be one without Covid related shutdowns and we will all be able to get out on the water to enjoy either competing or volunteering at the Club’s many events.