Membership floats to a new high at Island Barn SC

Island Barn Reservoir Sailing Club has gone from a membership of about 200 in 2018 to 250 now. Those extra memberships are almost all family memberships involving families that have become involved in multiple aspects of the club - meaning adult sailing, youth sailing and powerboating.

Much of that growth is linked to the expansion of the youth racing programme, led by Jonathan Leake, the club’s chief instructor, and Nigel Thomson, its RYA principal.

“Back in 2018, when our daughters started racing Toppers, we set up a club squad and started running training all through the year, including school holidays,” said Nigel. “It means the club is now one of the most successful in the country in Toppers. This has drawn many more sailors to the club's racing programme.” Racing success is, however, just part of the picture – the chance to build sailing friendships seems to play a role that is at least equally as important.

“We found that once the numbers of racing youngsters hit a certain level, they began to form lots of friendship circles,” said Jonathan. “We get 60 children turning up to our Sunday sailing school – and many of them come not just to race but to see their friends.

“Many clubs don't have enough youngsters for this to happen, so you get the 'lonely Topper' syndrome of clubs with just a couple of youngsters and lots of adults.

“We’ve also found that the parents make friends with each other, so it becomes really sociable all round.”

Photo - the sailing school annual party.

The bedrock for the club’s success with youngsters is its sailing school – founded by Mike Jones more than two decades ago when his daughter was one of the few youngsters sailing at the club. Mike realised the club needed some younger sailors and contacted local schools to invite pupils and parents to learn to sail. Mike has kept the school going ever since – running basic sail training for 50 children a year. “it’s great to look back at the number of people we’ve taught to sail and the number of friendships formed here,” he said.

The mainstay of the sailing school is Toppers but younger children can uses the club's fleet of Oppies and Optimists with Ray Lambe teaching beginners and Chris Balding introducing those who can sail to Oppie Racing. As they advance they graduate into Jonathan Leake's Racing Skills group which aims to lift them to the level of the RYA Junior Squads.

In the last couple of years, the Island Barn team’s efforts have seen more than half the places in the RYA's London & South East Topper squad awarded to youngsters from Island Barn's Racing Skills group. Many new trophies have also been added to the club’s prize cabinets (which are even being rebuilt to add extra capacity!).

Last year the club sent a team to the National Schools Sailing Association summer regatta, the first time it had entered that event. The 20-strong team won multiple individual trophies and brought home the overall Andrew Simpson team trophy.

At the Topper (NotThe) Nationals, at Grafham, Island Barn youngsters took six of the top 10 places with Edwin Cross in first place and Leo Yates coming second.

At the UK Laser/ILCA national championships in Weymouth another Island Barn youth sailor, Antonio Pascali won first place in the ILCA 4s, and Island Barn picked up another team trophy.

Separately, Coco Barrett, another Island Barn member, won the RYA Women’s ILCA nationals and was selected for the British Youth Sailing Team.

Photo - Joanna Leake at racing training

The encouragement offered to youngsters is being mirrored for adults too – but with a different kind of offering. The Trysail programme, for newcomers to sailing, runs on Tuesday evenings through summer. finishing with beer and pizza. Last year the course generated more than a dozen new memberships.

For those adults who can already sail but want to race, the club has also created an adult race coaching course on Saturdays through the summer – led by Gareth Griffiths, the RS Aero 5 National Masters champion.

And Jonathan has set up a separate winter coaching course for the many adult Laser/ILCA sailors who have boats at the club but struggle to find time to sail them. “We've started running summer and winter race coaching for adults in Lasers and our RS400 fleet is now doing the same. This improves everyone’s sailing but it also brings people together.”

So, for Island Barn, the training and coaching offerings are hugely important in retaining and boosting membership – for adults just as much as for youngsters. But they are not just ends in themselves. They’re also a way of building the friendships and relationships within the club that make people want to join and then to stay.

Island Barn Reservoir Sailing Club is an RYA Recognised Training Centre, RYA OnBoard Centre and a British Youth Sailing Recognised Club