Everyone who plays a hand in running JYSailing is a volunteer, but our main insturctors are paid employees who work full-time hours. On the administrative side of things, we're always looking for people to help spread the work around so that keeping this thing going is not only managable, but even fun!

There are two common refrains we hear from wonderful folks like you who want to get involved. The first is "I used to sail in college [or as a kid] and want to get back out on the water." This is hard to accomplish as a volunteer. Short of being a junior instructor, and commiting to a week of going along with the super young students in juniors classes, the only way to do that is to be hired as an instructor. We need folks who are trained and consistantly available from 9:00 - 5:00. You'd probably be better suited coming to weekly race nights, which will be organized soon.

The next most common background is "I know boats and used to do a lot of repair and maintainance." That is wonderful, but we've found that the difficulty in arranging basic maintainance for the sailboats As-Needed is so time-consuming that it's easier to just do it ourselves. How your expertise would translate into a real benefit in this instance is if you became a designated JYS repair person and inspected the fleet on a regular basis, on your own initiative, and were available for emergency repair calls as needed. See how it works? We need people who will take on a task and commit to it for at least a season. This sounds an awful lot like being a board member:

• More than anything else, we're looking for active board members. There is a JYS planning meeting about once a month, usually the first Monday. We hit the agenda fast, distribute tasks based on our season's outline, and then break. The more people we have there to take on these tasks, the longer we can keep the program going strong without burnout.
• After that, we're looking for inactive board members. These are folks who want to commit to a specific task, but can't stomach meetings more than a few times a year. Tasks you might consider include drysuit repair, occasional 420 maintenance, powerboat maintenance, junior instructor coordination, start-of-season outreach, fundraising -and more! Most of these require self-direction, others are more of a "we'll call when we need you" type of deal, but the key to everything is that you're consistantly there when we need you.
• And then we love to have people who are available for work parties (like launching the dock and boats, or emergency drysuit repairs). If you want to be on our Please Help list, send us an e-mail.
• We also very much need responsible, able students who have completed at least Level 1 to be junior instructors (the folks who go along with the kids in the Juniors classes). You don't need to be US Sailing certified to do this, just responsible and enthused. The position of Junior Instructor is unpaid (the free sailing time is well worth it), and it is the feeder system for becoming a (paid) Assistant Instructor, and full or Lead Instructor. If your student is interested, and their past instructors agree, we'd be happy to have them aboard.

Thanks a ton for thinking of us!