Club Duties

Club Duties and Dutyman

Most club members are obliged to undertake general sailing duties as a condition of membership of the Club (for exceptions see para. 3.22 of the Club rules). Members can expect to be rostered for 2-3 general sailing duties in an April to March sailing season, with those duties usually being on Saturdays or Sundays or bank holiday Mondays. Duties on occasional Thursday evenings are only suitable for trained Rescue Helms, whilst Wednesday daytime duties are for Rescue Helms and OODs (rostered separately – contact us if you would like to be considered for these). Please note that Wednesday Evening race series duties are not counted towards the annual duty tally.

Duty roles comprise Officer of the Day (OOD), Rescue Helm, Rescue Crew, Race Officer and Assistant Race Officer (ARO). The most appropriate roles for novices are OOD, Rescue Crew and ARO.

Duties are managed via the Dutyman web-based system. The full programme of duties for each season is uploaded onto Dutyman a few months before the new season starts. The benefit of this to you is that you can self-select your duties/dates in advance, by using the ‘volunteer for a duty’ feature within Dutyman – so you can take account of dates in the year you will not be available, or make sure your duty is on the same day as your regular crew/helm etc. Duties volunteered for in this way will be counted towards your annual 2-3 duties tally when we roster, so if you self-select 2 duties in a April to March sailing season, there’s a reasonable chance you won’t be randomly rostered for another duty that year.

You can volunteer for a duty at any time through the season, however, the range of choice will reduce through the year: we aim to maintain a full duty roster to 3-4 months ahead of the current date, so every couple of months the Duty Officer will allocate members into the up-coming gaps in the roster. If we do roster you for more than 3 duties across a 12 month range, please let us know.

We start rostering into the new season early in the new year, so if you do not intend to renew your membership, please email both the membership secretary and the duty secretary to advise us of this: membership@chewvalleysailing.org.uk; duties@chewvalleysailing.org.uk

  Dutyman points:

  • When self-selecting duties, double check you are on the right date and duty before finalising – if you do make a mistake, you may be able to use the undo button, but if not, email us and we’ll sort it out.
    Do not volunteer for Race Officer or Rescue Helm duties if you have not been authorised by CVLSC to undertake these.
  • You will receive a rostered duty email notification in advance of your duty date, to give you time to seek swaps, then reminder emails at around a month and 2 weeks before your duty date. If you’re not receiving emails from Dutyman, check that your Dutyman profile email address is up to date, and your spam/junk folder
  • Keep your Dutyman contact details and profile up to date and be sure to fill in your duty type/day preferences, any training you have completed, and if relevant, the name of the person you would like to do your duties with (such as your regular crew etc), although these preferences are best achieved through volunteering for duties. NB Please avoid using the Dutyman privacy settings on your profile as no one will be able to see your phone number, or also your name, on the Dutyman roster (except the duties team), so using these options isn’t helpful.
  • As soon as possible after you have been allocated a duty, either confirm it in Dutyman, or set it to ‘swap wanted’ and request swaps. If you get really stuck finding a swap, please contact us sufficiently in advance so that we can assist where possible.
  • Dutyman has been configured so that OOD, ARO and Rescue Crew duties can only be inter-swapped with each other; Race Officer duties can only be inter-swapped with each other; Rescue Helm duties can only be swapped with Rescue Helm duties; and Rescue/OOD duties can only be swapped with Rescue/OOD duties.
  • When you attend for your duty, be sure to sign the Duty Register sheet – we regularly check these to keep track of ‘no shows’, preferentially rostering them to fill vacant duty slots.
  • The CVLSC Introductory Duties Overview gives a brief summary of the basic duties for newcomers. Download the latest Duties Booklet (file size 1.4 MB) for detailed step by step instructions. The files are in PDF format.

CVLSC Advanced Rescue Helm Training

The minimum level of experience/training required for Rescue Helms is proven powerboat helming experience or completion of a PB Level 2 course (around 5 courses are available across each season). New Helms are also required to complete the Advanced Rescue Helm Course, which aims to enable helms to tackle any rescuing situation they may encounter on duty. It involves a day of Free training covering those aspects of the RYA Safety Boat course relevant to CVLSC. Check the regular emailed newsletter for details of the upcoming courses: you won’t find the Advanced Rescue Helm course on Webcollect but it is listed on the Club calendar.

Dutyman Calendar

For a full list of all current Events & Duties, click the button below and then login to Dutyman to view the roster.

All Events & Duties

Dutyman Status

25-Feb-18

CVLSC Dutyman has been configured to require members to login to view the roster.

21-Sep-18

Dutyman Update

There are no reported faults with Dutyman.

All Systems running normal.