The first ever Northern Territory Club Conference concluded on the 9 March with 20 club representatives in attendance from all three NT Clubs.

The conference was a resounding success with participating clubs conducting a short presentation outlining their achievements, challenges, membership landscape and their future plans. This was extremely insightful for all attendees and allowed excellent discussion amongst the audience.  

Other presenters & topics included:

• Australian Sailing’s new South Australian Club Services Officer and Largs Bay Sailing Club Commodore, Nicholas Neal, spoke about mentoring and succession planning that contained a key message of convincing long standing members that youth can do the job, with the assistance of their wisdom.
• Darwin Port on how to find and interpret the current shipping schedule. Increased shipping is expected in the coming 12 months. Special attention was brought to gas ships and their current presence in the harbour. Associated vision impairment and blind spots on large gas ships and why the 1km exclusion zone is important. Contact details for Darwin Harbour Control, Darwin Port FB page and how to report an incident.
• Australian Sailing’s SailPass introductory membership initiative sparked genuine excitement with strong interest to implement across all of the clubs.
• The newly launched Australian Sailing’s female participation brand SheSails has been introduced, explaining the available marketing toolkit and guidelines for planning and promoting female focused activities. View existing activities across NT.
• NT Parks & Wildlife presentation on crocodile awareness, covering trap locations & capture figures and how to report a croc if you spot one.
• Sea Shepherd Darwin on reducing single-use plastic. Tips to help your club remove polystyrene stubby coolers and how to get the support of your members with Marine Debris Campaign. For those interested to get involved please contact Kim Yates via 0417 831 373 or darwin@seashepherd.org.au. As an outcome, Darwin Sailing Club are now looking to incorporate a beach clean-up day with their annual working bee event in conjunction with the Sea Shepherd. For further information contact the club.

Another highlight of the conference included Stacey Jackson’s story. Stacey is a veteran of 12 Sydney Hobart Yacht Races, two Fastnet Races and two Volvo Round the World Ocean Races, including the recent 2017/18 Volvo Ocean Race on-board Vestas 11th Hour Racing and all female Team SCA. Stacey works hard to promote the sport of sailing, whilst demonstrating what a female in the sport can achieve.

“Guest presenter Stacey Jackson shared some of her remarkable and inspiring stories along with several informative presentations which rounded out a busy but productive get together,” said John Melenewycz - General Manager, Darwin Sailing Club.

Amongst all club representatives there was a real positive sense of conversation and realisation that they needed to work closer together. Everyone expressed their thanks to Australian Sailing for delivering the conference for the first time in the NT and a strong interest was expressed to make it an annual event.

Peter Bracken, Board Member of Darwin Sailing Club, echoed these thoughts.

“This was a well-run conference and thought out agenda. It was good to get with the other Clubs to exchange ideas and experiences. Having Nick from the Largs Bay Sailing Club speak about their journey with a young Committee was worthwhile as we all generally have older members in elected positions.

Stacey Jackson with her extensive Volvo and offshore racing sailing was very interesting and to have people from AS bring us up to speed with where the whole picture is now and heading into the next few years was very beneficial. All in all the conference is worth repeating.”

Find other state 2019 Club Conference dates HERE

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