Hoofer Sailing Club as currently organized functions as an active farm where those in charge prey on the vast majority of club members in parasitic fashion, like tapeworms in the gut of a large mammal. They do this by:
(1) falsely advertizing the benefits of club membership.
(2) obtaining membership fees from lots of people and using those fees to pay themselves.
(3) making sure that they don't give out too many ratings (except to eachother).
(4) by re-hiring eachother to teach lessons year after year.
(5) by appointing eachother to key Board of Captains positions after electing eachother to commodore and vice-commodore every year.
(6) by using a "work hours deposit" to coerce general club members into doing the menial supporting tasks such as data entry, boat repairs, food preparation, cleaning up the lakefront, etc.
Note that the work hours deposit recently got doubled. That was a clever move. And yet, 90% of club members have no say whatsoever in how the club is run, except (laugh) when they get to cast their vote for commodore each August. Only about 5% of club members even bother to vote in that election.
Thus the 90% are there (i.e. join the club) to serve the 10%, although of course they don't realize it at the time. They think they joined to learn how to sail. If someone pays their $200 membership fee, takes a couple of lessons, gets disgusted, and is never seen again, do club leaders care..? Of course not--that's the best kind of club member: Leave the money and run! The worst kind are the complainers--the ones who demand ratings on boats they're qualified to sail. They have to be dealt with, with disciplinary action for example, or by deleting the entire Forum in 2006. Club leaders have even been known to consult with attorneys so they could change club rules and administer more severe punishment to unsuspecting club members.
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The work hour "deposit" is really a fraudulent way to extract more money from club members. They pitch it as a deposit so that they can tell you that the cost of joining is actually much lower once you get your "deposit" back, but they rarely offer any work hour projects. The BOC tries to cover up the fraud by offering a few token tasks that are too menial to even pay an instructor to do, like doing the food for the social. But its not enough for more than a few members to get their "deposit" back. The fraud is exposed when they do the budget every year, and count the work hour "deposit" account as a major source of income.
ReplyDeleteThat's a gross exaggeration. We always have projects for club members to get there work hours and they're not all meanial ones like it says in this "article". We will be posting lots of new work hour projects soon so check back at the Hoofer sailing website or contact a club officer.
ReplyDeleteMembers have to do 8 work hours to get their deposit back. For 1,000 members, that's 8,000 work hours! Even if only 100 members want their deposit back that's 800 work hours. Is the number actually available anything close to this? That's over a month of 24/7 work.
ReplyDeleteYou weren't paying much attention this winter were you? There were thousands of man-hours done on several keelboats. Perhaps being more proactive rather than sitting around waiting for somebody to throw work at you would be more effective?
ReplyDeleteIt's great that the keelboats are maintained by volunteers, but its not a practical way for most club members to get there work hours even if "thousands of hours" were put in this winter. Most club members do not want to have to drive to Middleton for work hours, much less in winter. However, if there really are thousands of hours of work on the keelboats every year, there must be at least that on all the other boats. Why are we paying people to do it when those could all be volunteer hours>? People are not going to drive to the west side to get lathered in epoxy but they might at Hoofers.
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ReplyDeleteDo the keelboat elite even want people outside their circle to be involved with keelboat maintenance?
ReplyDeleteDoubtful.