With sailing clubs around Australia focused on attempting to restart operations as COVID-19 restrictions begin to lift, Australian Sailing has made the decision to delay the implementation of the change to Rule 46 until 1 January 2022.

This will give affiliated clubs an extra twelve months to prepare for the changes and allows them to focus on restarting sailing and club house operations in the second half of 2020.

“There is nothing more important to sailing in Australia than the strength of our clubs, and this pandemic has inflicted a great amount of pain on many of them,” said Australian Sailing CEO Ben Houston. “Clubs have had profits, staff and operations slashed in the past few months, and it will be a long road back for many of them.”

“We appreciate that there will be some administrative work in making the changes a reality at some clubs, so the extra time will enable them to focus on their own health and sustainability at the back end of this year whilst those resources are still limited.” he went on to say. 

Australian Sailing is focused on doing whatever can be done to help clubs restart racing and bringing their members back into the club houses and their boats.

The extra year to implement the rule change alleviates the time pressure to consider their own casual or introductory membership policies and make subsequent constitutional or bylaw and system changes to enable that. They will also have more time to express their position on casual or introductory memberships in their race documents and communications.

Though delayed for a year in its implementation in the rules, the policy position around requiring membership to help clubs improve their safety framework and realise membership opportunities has not changed. Australian Sailing recommends any club that has the capacity to implement casual or introductory memberships using SailPass ahead of the implementation date should still do so.

The SailPass technology has been developed by Australian Sailing for clubs to use to assist with the implementation of the changes to Rule 46. SailPass allows clubs to set up and set their own pricing for temporary memberships, with 100% of the proceeds from those memberships going directly back to the club.

Australian Sailing is continuing to develop how revolutioniseSPORT database (the system that issues a SailPass temporary membership) can integrate with different club systems, with the intention to make the user experience as seamless as possible and to reduce administration for Clubs.

Read more about the change to rule 46 at https://www.sailing.org.au/news/faq-changes-to-rule-46/ and about SailPass at https://www.sailingresources.org.au/sailpass-home/.

For help getting your club set up with SailPass please contact your local Regional Manager.