Fighting for cash

Like a dozen squealing piglets fighting over six* nipples, Hoofer leaders are spending their offseason arguing over what else they can get paid for. Paid keelboat instruction is the latest rage. What's wrong with giving people money to teach on the club's largest boats..? Everything.

For one, there has never been a shortage of qualified volunteer instructors on those boats. This contrasts with the lower fleets, e.g. Techs and Badger Sloops. The ratings flowchart naturally requires more ratings on those beginner boats, which is logical and necessary, but it creates a huge demand for Tech lessons--and the responsibility to provide enough of them. Plus, the smaller boats leak, they're tippy, and so on. Thus paid instruction is necessary for Techs and Slops in particular (and probably sailboards). Everything else should be 100% volunteer because Hoofers is a club, at least according to its constitution. It is not a paid service organization where employees work for members, although it's coming to resemble that more and more.

The more money that flows within the "club", the higher the membership cost and the more incentive there is to shut people out. It's hard enough to get rated on the keelboats without having the added disincentive (from the paid instructors' point of view) of you the student potentially taking their paying job away.

Simply put, the large keelboats are the pinnacle of sailing in Hoofers. Paying anyone to teach on them is like paying someone to have sex. It just isn't necessary. In fact, it's decadent and degenerate. And yet, some people who've been teaching on the keelboats for years are salivating at the thought. They should be ashamed because skippering those boats is reward enough.

If you want a job, go find a bloody job.

*Most sows actually have 12 teats, but they nurse lying on their side, so only six are accessible at any one time.