I have now been activily sailing for around 5 years, when I first joined my Cat club, there was one other teenager/person under 23. The club was run by dowdy old men, who did things the way they had always been done, there were probably three regular female sailors. The club looked horrible, and there was no social atmosphere.
Since then, there has been a quite revolution. We now have probably a third to a half of people under 30, the club is looking attractive, and inviting, women are nearly happy to spend time in there.
We have attracted new sailors of different skill levels.
The way we were able to do this was through participation, value adding to your club and membership.
Most young people today aren't afraid to pay for things, it just needs to be worth it.
You need to constantly look at your club and see if it is doing the best for your members with the resourses availaible.
People need to feel the club is not just for sailing.
I hope this all makes sence
Ant.
Dear Catman,
Your Ip issue may be this..... there is another "cat-lover" (or CatSailor Member) in your subnet.
If your dialing into an ISP (Internet Service Provider), at the time of connection your PC is assigned IP (internet protocol) address. This address is assigned dynamicaly from the ISP. This allows the ISP to supply service to hundreds of users without having to purchase (and assign) a specific IP address to each and everyone of there users PC's.
Example: Yesterday you logged on to your ISP and received an IP address (dynamicaly) for your PC of 192.10.148.100, that is you IP address for that session. When you log off your ISP, that IP address goes back into the "DHCP IP pool". If I lived in you town and had the same ISP, I could log on right after you logged off and receive the same IP address - 192.10.148.100 - so if I logged on to "our ISP", logged on to CatSailor, voted from my assigned IP address, then I log off and you log in you may be using the same IP address..... and Mary dosen't want us to vote twice.
Now if your at work and your IP address is "static" and you don't assign IP addresses via DHCP (dynamiclly), then someone is using you PC and their going to the CatSailor website and voting - CALL YOUR SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR AT ONCE - SECURITY BREACH!
Thanks for your explanation. Since I use a dail up, what you describe first is most likely the problem. 