My O’Day 22 Sailboat Blog

I’ve written a few posts regarding my new sailing endeavor with a local Sailing Club. I have been fairly involved with its day to day operations as the club’s Webmaster. One of the things I have noticed with this club that although it is not-for-profit, member owned and operated, it is not by any means immune to politicizing and bureaucracy.

The Channel Islands Chapter of the club has only been in existence for the last 5 years and only recently was there a real push for growth. I am personally interested in growing the membership of local sailors as well as add more boats to the fleet so I expressed interested in helping out however I can. My willingness to contribute was acknowledged by some of the officers of the club and they decided to make me the Chair of a new committee in choosing our next medium-size sailboat for the club in Channel Islands Harbor.

My job was to start keeping an eye on the market to see what is available and to put some thoughts into what we might purchase as the newest edition. Seemed reasonable to me and I was happy to oblige. As expected in any democracy, there was some push back. Apparently some people thought that it was premature to form such a committee as the boat purchase was still many months away. I was figuratively floored when I heard that someone recommended the forming of a committee to choose a boat selection committee.

You heard right. A committee to choose a committee. But wait a minute, who will be in the committee choosing committee? I suggest that what we really need is a committee choosing committee committee. I think.