Update from your Commodore
Published 9:47am on 14 Jun 2025
I cant believe that its June already where has this year gone?
I would like to take a bit of time to reflect upon the last few months and also the plans for the rest of the year and beyond.
When the new council first met last December, we held a brainstorming session to look at our plans for the year. The discussion centred around seven main topics:- Business Planning, Financial Planning, Membership, Publicity and Social Media, Club Maintenance and Development, Sailing & Training, and Social activities. An update for each of these areas is given below:
Business Planning: We identified the need for a detailed costed plan to look at our vision and goals over a one year and three year period. This plan is currently in draft form and we are looking to issue it over the next couple of months.
Looking forward, we are starting to think about the negotiations for a new lease which is due in October 2027, and also assessing the impact of the potential building of 3,500 houses within the vicinity of the club and how we can look to benefit from this. A meeting is to be held with Peel holding in July.
Financial Planning: We identified the need for a thorough review of our financial status over the last 5 years, which has been carried out. This has shown that we have been running at a yearly loss based upon our current income streams and running costs. We have been able to undertake several major refurbishments, such as the re-surfacing of the lane, the repair to the roof and the installation of the solar panels thanks to the legacy donation of Peter Mack, Nigel Greaves and Covid grants, but this money will not last. We are looking at various areas where expenses can be reduced (e.g. cheaper insurance, minimising maintenance projects) and income increased (e.g. more social events, sponsorship). We have also been setting budgets for each committee, and we are moving our accounts onto the Xero accounting package. This will enable us to better monitor spend against the budgets in real time and provide for a comprehensive range of real-time reporting. Another measure we would like to implement is to change our accounting period so as to provide much more up to date accounts to the membership at the AGM. An EGM is to be held in July to seek approval for this from members and to update the constitution accordingly.
Membership: We identified the need to find out what our members views were across many areas to assist us in identifying the key things that we should be putting in place. As a result, a very comprehensive survey was sent out to the membership in late March. Council are reviewing the findings and the results are aimed to be published to members in late June.
A major development this year has been the adoption of Sailing Club Manager. This extremely feature rich product was rolled out during the spring and has brought many benefits. It provides us with an integrated solution to manage our Membership, Berthing, Training and Sailing programmes, and produces a new website to automatically include all this content. This has been a huge undertaking and I would like to say many thanks for everyone involved in making this happen. I hope, that as a member, you agree that this is a big improvement to our previous systems.
We decided to hold our Open day earlier this year in order to tie in with the new training programme, so as to ensure that we can get new members on the water learning to sail as quickly as possible. This approach has been very successful and we have seen many new members booking onto courses. We also held a new members evening which was well received, and plan to continue with these.
Looking ahead, we are in the process of producing a members handbook, which will provide all the details you should need about the club and its facilities. Another area that we are considering for next year is a restructuring of our membership categories, and also the introduction of a buddy system for new members.
Publicity and Social Media: The new website has been put in place with regular news updates being added. We have also introduced the ESC WhatsApp community group and various sub-groups. These are providing a much better and quicker way for members to contact each other. We continue to use our Facebook members group.
The use of social media is an area where we can greatly increase our presence in the local community as well as the regional sailing clubs. We are looking for anyone who may be interested in taking on the role of Publicity Officer, which is a position on Council that has been vacant for some years now, to help us drive this forward. Please contact me if you would like to discuss.
Club Maintenance and Development: The solar panels finally went live early in the new year, and after many protracted discussions with our supplier Octopus, we finally got the meters reporting correctly and our export remunerations sorted. Big thanks to our Treasurer, Dave Smith, for sorting this out. The Tuesday gang continue to meet every week and have been busy addressing a list of jobs throughout this year, including upgrading the car park lighting to reduce energy costs, revamping the galley water supplies following an inspection by Bury Council Food Hygiene department, decorating the entrance area and Pendle Lounge, general tidying of the grounds and numerous other jobs. Thank you to all concerned.
There are no plans for any major refurbishments this year as we look to address our financial status.
Sailing and Training: Sailing Committee have introduced a more varied sailing programme this year, to include shorter series and new Trophy day formats such as match racing and team racing. We have also introduced many more training courses, including Thursday evening Junior and Adult Level 1, weekend Level 1 and Level 2 courses, Start Racing and also several Saturday Improver courses. These have all been well attended to date.
We are always open to suggestions on how we can improve the programme to meet the needs of our members and welcome any suggestions for next year.
We also introduced several procedures at the start of the year to ensure that our Safety and Training boats are well maintained, and that our safety equipment is regularly inspected and tested. This work was well received at our recent RYA Inspection.
Social: We recognised at the start of the year that we needed more social events for members, which would in turn increase our revenue. The new Social Committee kicked the year off with a very successful Burns night in January, and followed this up with an old favourite - the Launching Supper - which older members may remembered was an annual event. A lot of time and money has been spent to upgrade the Galley following an Inspection by Bury council, and it is now looking a lot cleaner and better organised. We have also introduced a card machine for payments for events organised by social committee. We also hosted the Dragon Boat event as a fund raiser for Bury Hospice, where social catered for around 500 people and raised much needed funds for the club.
Keep a look out for further events which will be announced soon. The committee needs extra bodies in order to organise and run their planned events, and if anybody would like to get involved in helping out in any way, please get in touch on rcsocial@eltonsailingclub.co.uk.
Summary: Overall its been a busy but I feel very fruitful and positive first half of the year. I hope that as a member you can see some of the benefits of all the work that has been happening. We are striving to improve your experience and enjoyment at the club.
One final thing we recognise the need to improve the lines of communication and transparency between the various committees and the club members. We plan to soon have pictures of committee members, along with contact details, posted at the club so that you can put a face to a name. All AGM and committee minutes can now been found on your portal on the website.
Please feel free to email me if you wish to chat about any matters you have.
Chris McClung
Commodore
commodore@eltonsailingclub.co.uk.
Last updated 10:28am on 14 June 2025
