East Antrim Boat Club

Aim

Get our members and community back on the water, enjoying boating and developing our volunteers and coaches.

Who are we?

East Antrim Boat Club was established over 70 years ago, we have developed the types boating and purpose of the club over this time. We now have an active dinghy racing fleet, thriving junior fleet, keelboat racing and cruising members. Our active members range in age from 6 to 86 years old and that's the beauty of our sport and our club. 

We are a Royal Yachting Association (RYA) accredited training centre so can offer courses and activities for people of all abilities and have trained RYA instructors for youths, adult sailing and power boat skills. 

Our members represent us at National and International events and we have produced high calibre sailors for decades. 

We host sailing events for different classes each year attracting visitors to Larne from all over the country.

We have committed volunteers who keep our club running, from boat maintenance, planning and organising events, running weekly racing and developing our juniors through training. We also welcome members of the community to take part in free try sailing day and regular sessions to encourage more people to enjoy the water safely.

Community impact

Our club aims to deliver sailing and opportunities to meet the needs of our members but we offer opportunities for everyone in the community to get involved. We would love to welcome new members to our club and we open our doors every year to people of all ages and areas of the community to 'have a go' and start boating.

We are an 'RYA OnBoard' club which has seen us run a Friday Night Club for non member juniors to come and enjoy the water without the need for any of their own safety gear or specialist equipment. We also run Junior and Adult Dinghy courses where non-members can learn to sail and test out the experience before becoming members. 

Our clubhouse facilities can be used for meetings and functions for members and non members. We welcome local groups who come to socialise, listen to music and celebrate family events in our welcoming environment.

Why are we crowdfunding?

We are crowdfunding because we want to re energise our membership and ensure we have capacity and capability to keep welcoming new members and provide appropriate support.

Along with the rest of the world, everything changed when the pandemic hit. We had to stop operations and all our active members were stuck indoors with no outlet. We lost these years in developing our next generation of instructors, coaches and volunteers and we desperately need to get back on track.

We want to grow our membership and ensure we have skilled volunteers to support this growth. We need to invest in training courses including power boating, first aid and coaching qualifications to grow and retain our volunteers workforce. 

We want to invest in the young people who are the future of our club, we want to see more people from the local community learning how to sail and getting involved as sailing is a lifelong sport.

To bring new people to our club we want to ensure there are no barriers to entry to we want to provide quality equipment for quality experiences for non-members to use as they start their boating journeys.

Our initiatives will include:

• Introduction of Novice race training and racing for new adult sailors.
• ‘Ladies that Launch’- campaign to get females from the club together and participating in a fun race series on a regular basis. New in 2023.
• ‘Get back sailing’ camp for young sailors in early spring- focusing on good experiences and having fun on the water.
• Instructor and rescue crew training days- upskilling volunteers and building confidence on the water in different conditions.

How we’ll spend the money raised

• We will get more Sailing Instructors and coaches qualified at the club to expand our current ability to deliver training to our members and visitors.
• We will train Powerboat Instructors at the club to ensure we have competent safety boat cover during training and events. We will therefore be able to provide safety boat qualifications and training for anyone in the local community to stay safe on the water.
• We will invest in our equipment to maintain and upgrade the training facilities so that anyone can come and join the club or a course without the need for their own equipment and increase our reach within the community.
• We will ensure our volunteers have the appropriate qualifications and training to carry out their roles.

How you can play your part

There are four simple ways to help us reach our target, and make this project a reality.

1. Make a pledge. Don’t delay if you’re going to support us because momentum is key to our success!

2. Spread the word. Share our project on your social media pages and tell the world to get behind us! The more people we reach, the more support we will get.

3. Offer rewards. Get involved if you are a local business by donating things we can offer to our supporters. We will give you a shout out!

4. If you want to run your own fundraiser to support us, maybe a sponsored activity or similar, use the 'contact project' button at the top of our page to let us know. Setting up your own page only takes a few minutes and you won’t need any bank details. Just a fun idea!

This project successfully funded on 28th June 2023