Sailing Club Membership Categories: Rights & Eligibility

Membership categories are one of the least standardised parts of Australian club sailing. Two clubs can use the same label for different rights and obligations.

Common categories#

Possible categories include:

• full sailing
• ordinary
• associate
• social
• crew
• family
• junior
• youth
• student
• senior
• boat owner
• country/remote
• temporary/SailPass
• corporate

What membership can control#

Depending on the club:

• voting rights
• boat registration
• race entry
• storage eligibility
• marina access
• guest privileges
• hospitality access
• reciprocal privileges
• training discounts

Joining fees and levies#

Potential charges include:

• nomination/joining fee
• annual subscription
• sailing levy
• storage
• marina berth
• race entry
• building levy
• volunteer bond

The true annual cost can therefore be much higher than the headline membership fee.

Waitlists#

Some categories, storage or marina facilities can have waitlists even when membership itself is open.

Verification#

Membership fees and categories change frequently. The live directory should link to the current membership page rather than freezing detailed prices into evergreen editorial copy.

Current club and activity requirements#

Use the guide to form questions, then verify the changing facts with the club. Pay particular attention to current program status, storage availability, class activity and season. Those are exactly the fields most likely to become stale. Club-data corrections belong in YouSail.

Designing a membership structure that works#

A membership structure is a statement about who a club wants, and members read it that way whether or not the committee intended it.

A club with a well-priced crew category is telling non-owners they belong. A club whose only realistic option is full membership with storage is telling everyone to arrive with a boat. A club with a family rate priced below two adult memberships is actively recruiting families.

The common structural problems are recognisable. Categories that have accumulated over decades until nobody can explain the differences. A junior rate that ends abruptly at an age where sailors are most likely to leave. A social category so cheap and so privileged that it subsidises non-sailors at the expense of sailing. A country or student rate that has not been reviewed since it was set.

The useful discipline is to ask what each category is for, what it costs the club to serve, and whether it is producing the members the club needs. Categories that answer none of those questions are usually candidates for removal.

The second discipline is transparency. A published fee schedule with what each category includes prevents the drip-feed of additional costs that damages trust with new members more than the amounts involved ever justify.

Related sailing club management guides#

How to tell a functioning club process from a struggling one, how these things drift over time, and what a prospective member can reasonably ask are set out once in what a well-run sailing club looks like.