Keelboat racing

Race revolution

One club is revitalising keelboat racing through the innovative use of technology. Georgie Corlett-Pitt speaks to JOG Race Captain Stuart Lawrence to find out more

It wasn’t that long ago that race results would take a couple of days to be posted, typically scribbled in pencil, recalls Stuart Lawrence, Race Captain of Junior Offshore Group – the keelboat racing club better known to many as JOG. While he says there was nothing unusual about the way the club was operating in a sport that is entrenched in tradition, the potential to transform a club on the brink of decline was tantalising.

Stuart talks animatedly as he goes on to explain how, after a term volunteering on the JOG committee, he felt compelled to initiate real change. He knew the potential that technology has to accelerate change from his professional expertise as founder and director of Serversys, a business systems provider specialising in digital transformations. With that in mind, he stepped into a position first as a club flag officer, then as Captain and began to galvanise support to help realise a vision of JOG as the ‘yacht club of the future’ guided by the belief that, while fancy premises are not necessary to achieve that, a thriving, engaged multi-generational membership most definitely is. At the same time, he was aware of the importance of retaining JOG’s Corinthian values of promoting grassroots keelboat racing that had been built up over the club's 72 year history.

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The new web portal has increased interest - bumper turn-outs and super close racing have become the norm

Strategic approach

To many, it would seem a huge challenge that could take a generation to achieve. But under Stuart’s leadership, the JOG committee developed a strategic approach, focused around an online platform that could be used to both communicate with existing members and engage with a new, younger demographic, and that would integrate well with a social media outreach campaign.

“We began with a basic website update, but it soon moved on in a bid to streamline the race entry and results process, which are both complicated processes,” Stuart explains. “Racing in JOG and at other yacht clubs has always seemed very dated, with start lines with flags and an entire language of its own, understood fully by few. That doesn’t appeal to young people. Yes, it’s traditional and tradition has benefits, but it can also stop people engaging with racing.”

Three years later, and the result is a dynamic web portal that gives members access to all relevant documents and specially written advice guides, and the ability to register for events, pay for entry and merchandise, track live results, monitor competitors, and analyse individual stats such as miles and hours spent racing and compare them with others on live leader boards; individual crew results are visible to others, so skippers looking for crews can search ‘live’ racing CVs. Importantly for accessing when afloat, the site is optimised for mobile use, and individual results are confirmed the second a boat crosses the line, while integration with WhatsApp has enabled communication with crew as well as skippers – boosting the sense of community. The system is scalable, so races for 150 boats are the equivalent work for club officials as those with 15 boats – an important consideration when relying on club volunteers for race management and safety.

Stuart estimates this level of tech solution would cost in excess of £350k to deliver as a corporate project, having taken three designers a total of three years to build. He admits it’s not the sort of amount that ordinary yacht clubs are able to invest – an industry imbalance that he questions, given the amount owners are willing to invest in their boats.

Fortunately for JOG, Stuart’s vision and support has put them in the enviable position of not only being able to remove barriers using technology, but being able to deliver

ABOVE LEFT

A Corby 35, NJOS, embracing the challenge of offshore racing

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Elite sailors such as Dee Caffari have recently been attracted by JOG events, though a Corinthian spirit prevails

on the next level, with engagement and ease of communication creating a buzzing community at the centre of that. It’s not only proving to be a hugely valuable asset in JOG’s much-needed under 30s recruitment campaign, but it’s also forging a path that Stuart hopes will inspire other clubs to consider how they might use resources within their means to implement a similar step change.

Next generation

Any large scale organisational change of course has complexities, so some serious big picture thinking has been necessary to maximise benefits and reach. Stuart says: “Encouraging younger people into sailing is not just as simple a solution as saying ‘right, let’s advertise here’; there’s a lot more to it than that. What we’ve seen already in the industry is that there are siloed solutions are getting young people in, but none of them really build the whole future. Yes, you can bring someone along to go and race on your boat - but how does that keep them in sailing? A lot of youngsters come through the ranks from dinghy sailing, but it can be a big step into keelboat racing. There are challenges; we see for example the growing popularity of double-handed racing, which is great, but has its limitations if you want to train five or six young people at a time.

“As a club, since having this platform, we have been able to reach out to young people to come sailing, give them confidence to advertise themselves as crew by building up a sailing CV within our platform that’s automatically updated and fully visible to other skippers. We’re finding that that’s not just bringing people to do one sailing event, but keeping that connection because they are engaging with the platform, tracking their own stats and performance, and everyone can follow each other.

“More than just a race entry or results site, the platform helps us put the whole ring around the life of someone, from coming into sailing, being able to see what boats are looking for crew, and helping to develop their sailing career from there.”

Stuart points out that, despite its operational transformation, JOG’s direction is still firmly underlined by its long-standing commitment to keelboat sailing at grassroots level. Its history is as a proving ground for yachts of 16-20ft who wanted to test themselves offshore; today, racing is competitive with a busy calendar, but with a Corinthian spirit that, for example, excludes individually sponsored yachts and doesn’t shy from using the term ‘chivalrous’ in relation to the club.

Younger sailors seeking to broaden their experience in keelboat racing align well within that ethos.

Stuart says: “We feel it’s our responsibility to bring youth into the sport and start them off, and if they go off and sail in big RORC races or sail double-handed or at major international contests, that’s great – that, for us, is a success.”

Over the last few years, JOG has not only halted decline but seen a 250% increase in membership. 25% of the total membership falls now into the new under 30 category, catchily dubbed ‘Generation JOG’; under 25s can join for free and there is no membership vetting process

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The busy calendar sees 18 events this year, with inshore as well as offshore races

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Short-handed entries race within the main fleet but also score separate points for the race and the overall series (the latter is true for any category). Mentoring opportunities are helping develop confidence with the aim of improving retention; Stuart himself regularly includes younger members as crew on his J/120 Scream 2. A specific fund has been established for Gen JOG initiatives such as race training in order to boost young people’s confidence on the water as a conduit towards regular crew spots. Virtual meetups give direct access to celebrity guest speakers. Gen JOG members are being encouraged to sit on the committee and their opinions are regularly being canvassed as part of a continuous campaign towards ‘the club of the future’ vision.

Member Oliver Jenkins describes the Gen JOG programme as “a great help to me in moving up from dinghy racing to keel boat racing”, as he explains that “after I joined, I immediately advertised myself on the crew finder as a Generation JOG member; within two weeks I was learning how to do the bow and now I’m a regular part of the race crew building up my sailing CV with 133 miles already under my belt.”

Looking ahead

The resulting flip-reverse in numbers has re-introduced a vibrancy to the club’s activities, which Stuart says even the most stalwart traditionalists find hard to argue with. As the level of competition has risen across the board, it’s drawn attention from the likes of Dee Caffari MBE, Pip Hare and other elite racers, strong testament to an organisation that would have been dismissed as irrelevant and fuddy-duddy by pro racers just a few years ago.

JOG has had a lot of interest

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in its platform, and Stuart hopes the technology and example they have set can help inspire change in other organisations too.

For JOG itself, having already surpassed expectation, the next stage is to further develop benefits for existing members as the key to the JOG community. Initiatives such as ‘danger lists’ – showing live updates on your closest competitors – and digital milestone badges – which sailors can collect when they have sailed a certain number of miles or completed their first Channel crossing, for example – have already proven popular.

“We want to make ourselves ‘sticky’,” says Stuart, as he explains that the long term strategy relies on achieving impact at multiple levels. “The milestone badges, for example, mean that people want to come back and race again with us because they want to earn more badges, so skippers are no longer looking for crew because there’s an abundance of crew on our crew finder. This is something we plan to build on. Any boat with a Generation JOG sailor on board is automatically entered into a separate results league with additional prizes available - spread throughout the fleet for both participation and performance - so there’s already plenty of healthy competition among skippers to invite Gen JOG sailors on board. Importantly, it means that people start talking about your organisation and so they encourage more skippers to come and race with you.”

He says that booming membership and increasing race entries have “created a real energy” within the club. It has also made the club attractive to a raft of commercial partners, further testament to JOG’s new reach and appeal.

Sponsors are vetted for their commitment to sustainability – a factor that has been made a cornerstone of JOG operations and another area in which they are seeking to directly engage members. It’s a vital topic that is held to the fore by the under 30s, but the scope for increased education and awareness among the wider membership is significant, and once again, the web portal is set to be central to encouraging uptake.

Through a partnership with notfor-profit organisation Clean Sailors, JOG is delivering a programme to help sailors to better understand how they can minimise their environmental impact. Relevant issues include the effects of antifoul on the marine environment, eliminating single use plastic on board, and extending the lifespan of sails and equipment. Again, through digital rewards accessed via the portal, members will be able to demonstrate their commitment to sustainability and ocean health. It’s an area that Stuart and the wider committee feel passionately about, and there’s a firm belief that all clubs can act as platforms for change.

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Younger crews have been given the chance to gain experience thanks to Gen JOG

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Action from the 2022 Lonely Tower Race

If at first…

As we wrap up our chat, Stuart is busy preparing for JOG’s Cowes to Cherbourg race – the first time the race has been run since the pandemic – with some 40 entries expected. It’s one of several cross-Channel fixtures, and part of the appeal is the chance to “chat all things sailing” with fellow sailors at the end of the race while enjoying some French hospitality. The social side is, of course, an important element; attendance at post-race gatherings has rocketed recently thanks to WhatsApp communications with all crew, not just skippers. In total this year, there are 18 events making up JOG’s 2022 schedule, split between an inshore and an offshore series; the highlight being JOG Week in August with racing from Dartmouth and Torquay, as well as feeder races to and from Cowes. A bumper turn out is expected.

Asked what the secret to achieving such a positive impact in such a short space of time, Stuart credits the energy and open-minded approach of his fellow committee members. But more than that, he says, “It’s about not being scared to try things. Often when you have a big committee, people are reluctant to try something because it will fail or it has failed in the past. We have taken the approach of ‘let’s give it a try, if it fails then we will re-form it in a different way’. "I believe that’s what holds a lot of yacht clubs back; because something failed 10 or 15 years ago thinking it is never going to succeed. That is the wrong approach. "My advice would be that it is always best to try things.”