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For volunteer-led UK dinghy clubs

Dinghy Club Management Software

The duty rotas, race series and membership admin a dinghy club actually needs, without the spreadsheet trail.Last updated 19 May 2026
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The dinghy club problem

Volunteer-led, time-poor, and three jobs deep

Most dinghy clubs run on goodwill. The Treasurer is also the Membership Secretary. The Race Officer co-ordinator is also on the safety boat rota. Everyone has a day job, and somehow the season has to start in March.

The committee turns over every couple of years. Whoever inherits the duty rota inherits a colour-coded spreadsheet that only made sense to the previous Race Secretary. Three weeks before the first Sunday of the season, you're chasing twelve people on WhatsApp asking if they can take the OOD slot on the 14th. Half don't reply. The ones who do want to swap with someone else, who's already swapped with someone else.

Then there's the fairness problem. The same six members are doing every duty because they always say yes. The parents of juniors quietly avoid signing up because Sunday morning is already a school-run-then-coaching-then-rigging sprint. The members who only sail mid-week feel like the rota is rigged against them. Nobody is wrong, but nobody is happy either, and the committee meeting after the AGM gets stuck on duty fairness for an hour.

Safety boat shortages are the version of this that actually stops racing. Powerboat Level 2 holders are a smaller pool than the membership list, and if two of them are racing themselves, you're an hour out from the start gun trying to find someone qualified to drive the rib. Open meetings make it worse - bigger fleets, more demand on safety cover, and the rota has to flex.

Underneath all of this is the admin tail. Membership renewals come in late. Junior medical forms get emailed to the wrong inbox. The galley team can't find last year's signing-off list. New joiners get pointed at a Google Sheet that hasn't been touched since 2022. The committee is doing two seasons of work for one season of sailing, and the volunteer well isn't bottomless.

SailHQ is built for that committee. Not for a paid club manager with a desk and a 9-to-5. For the people running it on Tuesday evenings around their actual lives - the ones who'd rather be rigging their own boat than tracking down whoever borrowed the start hooter last week.

Sunday racing

Built for the way Sunday racing actually runs

A dinghy club race day isn't one duty, it's six. Race Officer, Assistant Race Officer, Safety Boat Helm, Safety Boat Crew, Galley, Results. Each has its own qualification requirements and its own pool of willing volunteers. SailHQ models it the way your committee already thinks about it.
SailHQ duty types admin showing colour-coded race officer, assistant race officer, safety boat helm, safety boat crew, galley, and results duty types each with a points value and qualification gate
Configure every duty your club runs - colour, icon, points value, and qualification gates - in one screen.

Fair by design

Each duty type carries its own settings. Points decide how the rota balances fairness across the season - so a Race Officer slot is worth more than a Galley slot, and the system spreads the load. A short name keeps the calendar readable on a phone. A custom colour means a quick glance at the season view tells you who's doing what.

Self-signup is a toggle. Some duties (Galley, Beachmaster) are happy on first-come-first-served. Others (Race Officer) need committee approval before they're confirmed. Set the rule once per duty type and SailHQ enforces it.

Qualified and exempt

Qualification gates are where dinghy clubs get serious about safety. Tag the Safety Boat Helm duty type with RYA Powerboat Level 2 and only members who hold that ticket can be assigned. Tag the Galley duty with Food Hygiene if your club takes that line. Add custom qualifications - First Aid, Senior Instructor, VHF - and use them however your committee has decided to.

Exemptions handle the edge cases. A member recovering from injury, a junior under 16, a Treasurer who doesn't sail. Per-member, per-duty-type, time-bounded so the exemption ends when the reason does.

SailHQ edit duty type form showing reminder days configuration, cancellation deadline, qualification requirements, and self-signup toggle
Reminder days, cancellation deadlines, and qualification rules - all per duty type, not one-size-fits-all.

Email reminders go out the number of days before each duty that you decide. Some clubs want a fortnight's notice for race officers and 48 hours for galley; SailHQ lets you set both, per duty type, without compromise. Cancellation deadlines stop someone bailing at 9pm on Saturday for a 9am Sunday start - if a member needs to drop later than that, they need committee approval, which keeps the rota fair.

Swap requests handle the rest. A member can target a specific person they've already squared it with on the foreshore, or broadcast the swap to the qualified pool and let anyone pick it up. Admin approves with one click and the rota updates itself - no chasing the WhatsApp thread, no editing the master spreadsheet, no missed updates because someone forgot to tell the Race Secretary.

Still planning the first version? Use the free duty rota generator, then move the live season into SailHQ when the club is ready.

Series templates

One click, full season

Dinghy clubs run series. Sunday morning club racing, Wednesday evening summer, the autumn pursuit, the frostbite. Each is the same shape week after week. Describe the shape once and SailHQ generates the whole season from it.
SailHQ series template builder with day of week, frequency, race count, race start times, and default duty type selection
Build a Sunday morning template once - SailHQ generates the whole 26-week schedule with duty slots ready to fill.

Day and frequency

Pick the day of the week and how often it runs - weekly, fortnightly, monthly. Frostbite series? Set it for alternate Sundays from October to March.

Race count and timing

Two back-to-back races on Sunday morning? One race on a Wednesday evening pursuit? Set start times per race and SailHQ schedules them.

Default duty bindings

Bind the duty types this series needs - RO, ARO, Safety Boat, Galley. Every event generated from the template comes with the slots ready to assign.

Generate the series for a date range and SailHQ creates every event - 26 Sunday mornings with 6 duty slots each is 156 vacancies, all set up in seconds. Edit the template and the schedule rebuilds. Add an extra Galley slot mid-season and it back-fills the remaining weeks. Skip the bank holiday weekend and the schedule respects it.

Dinghy clubs typically run three or four series in parallel through a season - Sunday club racing, Wednesday evening summer series, junior training, an open meeting weekend. Each one is its own template. Each one slots into the same calendar so members can see the whole picture from their phone. The committee doesn't have to think about the schedule again until it's time to plan next year.

Member portal

A member portal that actually gets used

Members open SailHQ on their phone and see the only three things they care about: when's my next duty, what's the weather doing, and what slots are still open. No login fatigue, no twelve-tab dashboard, no asking the secretary.

That last point matters more than it sounds. Most duty rota tools ask members to email or message the rota co-ordinator to swap. SailHQ lets a member resolve a clash themselves - they see Saturday's safety boat slot is still vacant, they grab it before the reminder goes out, and the rota balances itself. The committee gets fewer messages, the duty fills faster, and the member feels useful instead of nagged.

  • Next duty card with date, role, and qualification reminder
  • Live weather pulled from your club's coordinates
  • Vacant duty slots a member can grab without messaging anyone
  • Mobile-first swap requests - send, accept, decline, all from a phone
SailHQ member portal dashboard showing the member's next duty, current weather, and vacant duty slots they can claim
Juniors and families

Junior programmes and family memberships

Most dinghy clubs run a junior section, a Saturday morning training group, or both. The admin around them - household memberships, age gating, emergency contacts, instructor qualifications - is where free tools fall over. SailHQ handles it in the box.

Households and family subs

Group parents and juniors into a household. The family pays one membership, juniors hold their own profile, and the parent controls the account login. Emergency contacts cascade from the household so you don't ask the same questions twice.

  • Single family subscription, multiple linked profiles
  • Quarterly proration for mid-season joiners
  • Emergency contacts shared across the household

Age gating and membership types

Define junior, cadet, youth, senior, and family membership types with minimum and maximum ages. SailHQ won't let a 12-year-old sign up as a senior member by mistake, and it auto-flags juniors approaching their age cut-off so the next year's renewals are clean.

  • Configurable min and max ages per membership type
  • Junior duty exemptions applied automatically
  • Renewal flags for juniors ageing into the senior tier

Health and medical fields

Capture the things you legally need to capture for juniors and only those. GP details, emergency contacts, swim flag, allergies. Visible only to authorised committee roles, never on a member's public profile.

  • GP and emergency contact fields per member
  • Swim flag and known allergies
  • Role-gated visibility - admin only, never public

Instructor qualifications

Track RYA membership, RYA Powerboat Level 2, First Aid, VHF, and any custom qualifications your club records. Expiry dates trigger reminders so the senior instructor running junior sessions isn't doing it on a lapsed ticket.

  • RYA, Powerboat L2, First Aid, VHF tracked per member
  • Custom qualifications you define
  • Expiry reminders so duty cover stays compliant

Built for clubs from 30 to 300 dinghy members

Per-member pricing that scales the way your club does. Every feature on every plan.

Starter

1-50 members

£0.65 per member, per month

No base fee. Suits a small dinghy section starting out.

  • Full duty rota and series scheduling
  • Member portal and household memberships
  • Migration and onboarding included

Club

51-150 members

£6.48 + £0.52 per member

For clubs with a senior fleet, juniors, and an active series calendar.

  • Everything in Starter
  • 20% discount on per-member rate
  • Priority migration support
See full pricing and the calculator

Dinghy club questions, answered

The questions committee members ask before they sign up. For anything else, see the full FAQ or drop us a line.

Yes. SailHQ is built around the realities of volunteer-led clubs. The Starter tier is priced for clubs with up to 50 members and includes the same features as larger plans - duty rotas, series templates, member portal, household memberships. Most small clubs run their full duty rota, series schedule, and member list inside SailHQ within a week of going live.

Members need an account to view their duties, request swaps, and grab vacant slots themselves - which is the whole point. Accounts are created by an admin invite link, so no passwords are emailed around. Junior members under a household can be linked to a parent's account so the parent manages it on their behalf.

A member opens their duty in the portal and either targets a specific person they've already squared it with, or broadcasts the swap to the whole eligible pool. Anyone qualified can pick it up. Admins approve the swap with one click and SailHQ updates the rota and reminders automatically. No more WhatsApp threads asking who can cover next Sunday.

SailHQ supports household and family memberships. Parents pay a single family subscription and junior members are linked to the household. Membership types can be age-gated (junior, cadet, youth) so juniors hold their own profile with emergency contacts but parents control the account. Junior members can be exempt from senior duty rotas automatically.

Yes. Each duty type has qualification gates. You can require RYA Powerboat Level 2 for safety boat duties, First Aid for galley first aiders, VHF for race officers, or any custom qualification you add. Members who don't hold the qualification can't be assigned, and the system flags expiring certificates so the rota stays compliant.

Most clubs get their full season scheduled in an afternoon. You configure your duty types and qualification rules once, build a series template (Sunday morning, two races, six duty slots), then generate the whole 26-week schedule with one click. Editing the template re-flows the schedule, so a late change to safety boat numbers doesn't mean rebuilding the rota by hand.

Yes. Send across your existing member list and duty rota - usually in a spreadsheet - and the SailHQ team will map it into the right duty types, member fields, and households. Most migrations are completed in 1-2 days and migration support is included in the price. We've helped clubs move off SiCalendar, club-specific Google Sheets, and bespoke Access databases.

No, and we won't pretend it does. Race scoring is its own discipline and clubs already trust Sailwave or HalSail for it. SailHQ runs the duty rota, the schedule, and the member admin around your racing. Many clubs export their race day list from SailHQ and load it straight into their scoring software, so the workflow stays simple.

Running a yacht or cruising club instead? See the sailing club software overview.

Hand the duty rota to SailHQ this season

Spend your committee evenings on the parts of running a club you actually enjoy. Let SailHQ handle the rota chase.
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