Keeping Your Club Profile Up to Date

You filled in your details when you joined, but since then you have moved house, bought a new boat, passed your Day Skipper and your eldest has started sailing juniors. Keeping your club profile up to date matters more than it sounds: it is where the club looks for an emergency contact if something goes wrong on the water, and where event entry forms get your boat details from.

Everything in this guide is in the members area, under the menu at the top of the page: My Profile, Notification Settings and Account Settings.

Your name, phone number and address

Open My Profile and press Edit Basic Info. You can change your first and last name, phone number and address, then press Save Changes. Phone number and address are required, as the club needs a way to reach you.

Your membership details (type, status and the date you joined) are shown on the same page but can only be changed by the club. If something there looks wrong, contact the membership secretary.

Changing your email address

Your email address is also your login, so changing it takes an extra step to make sure the new address is really yours:

1. Press Change next to your email address.
2. Enter the new address twice, and your current password, then press Send Verification Code.
3. A six-digit code is sent to the new address. Enter it and press Verify & Update Email. The code lasts 10 minutes; use Resend Code if it has not arrived.
4. You are signed out. Sign back in with your new email address.

Family members and your partner

A family membership is one household account with one login. Your partner and children do not get separate logins; instead, they are recorded on your profile so the club knows who is covered.

• If your club records a spouse or partner, their name, email and mobile appear in their own section with an Edit button.
• If you have a family membership, go to Family Members, press Add Family Member and enter their first name, last name and date of birth. Email and mobile are optional.

Keep names and dates of birth accurate, and remove anyone who is no longer covered by your membership.

Emergency contacts

Under Emergency Contacts, press Add Contact. Each contact needs a name and phone number, and you can add an alternative number and an address. You can also say whether they are the contact for boat emergencies, personal emergencies or both.

You must have at least one emergency contact, so to replace your only contact, add the new one before deleting the old one. Check these each season; an out-of-date number is no use on the day it is needed.

Qualifications

The RYA Qualifications section lists what you hold. Press Manage Qualifications (or Add Qualifications if you have none yet) and tick the RYA courses you have completed. The list runs from Start Sailing and Competent Crew through Day Skipper and Yachtmaster to Powerboat, Safety Boat, First Aid and instructor qualifications. For anything not on the list, such as an ICC or a VHF licence, use Other Qualifications and Add Custom. Press Save Qualifications when you are done.

Qualifications help the committee and race officers know who can do what. If your club asks for proof, it will tell you how to provide it.

Boats

Under Boat Ownership, press Add Boat. You are first asked whether the boat is already registered by another member, for example if you share it with a friend. Search by sail number or boat name and you can join as a co-owner, so the boat is recorded once rather than twice.

For a new boat, press Add New Boat and enter the boat name, type or class, overall length and sail number, along with optional details such as hull and deck colour, whether it has a spinnaker, and notes. The sail number is required for sailing boats and optional for RIBs and motorboats. If you have more than one keelboat, you can mark one as your main keelboat.

Duplicate sail numbers are not allowed. The check ignores spaces, hyphens and capital letters, so "GBR 1234" and "gbr-1234" count as the same number. If the number is already in the system, you will be told a boat with that sail number already exists and offered the choice of joining as co-owner or changing the number. Once a boat is saved its sail number cannot be changed, so check it before you save. If you have sold a boat or need a sail number corrected, ask the club.

Keeping boats up to date pays off when you enter events: the entry form lets you pick a boat from your profile rather than typing its details in again.

Club-specific details

If your club asked its own questions when you signed up, such as how you would like to help around the club, those sections appear on your profile too, each with an Edit button. The answers you gave on your original application are shown as a read-only record.

Email preferences

Open Notification Settings. Under Email Preferences there are two switches, both on to start with:

• Duty Emails: duty assignments, changes, reminders and swap requests.
• Club Communications: newsletters and announcements from the club.

Change either and press Save Changes. Security emails, such as password resets, are always sent, and so are emails about your own invoices, bookings and event entries. The bell icon at the top of the members area shows your in-site notifications, with a Mark all read button.

Your password

To change your password, sign out and use Forgot Password? on the members login page. Enter your email address and you are sent a reset link, which works once and for one hour. Choose a new password of at least 8 characters. If the club set up your account with a temporary password, you will have chosen your own the first time you signed in.

Account settings: cookies, your data and deleting your account

Account Settings is where you control your privacy.

• Cookie preferences. Strictly necessary cookies are always on. Analytics, marketing and functional cookies can each be switched on or off; press Save Preferences.
• Download my data. Press Download and your browser saves a file containing the personal data the club holds about you in this system: your profile, family, emergency contacts, boats, qualifications, invoices, bookings, event entries, applications and more. It is a JSON file, a standard format that other software can read.
• Delete my account. Press Delete Account and confirm. Your personal details are removed and your account is closed; invoices are kept, as financial records must be retained for 7 years.

Before an account can be deleted, a few things have to be tidied up, and the page tells you exactly what:

1. Unpaid invoices are listed with a button to view and pay them.
2. Upcoming duties need to be reassigned. A button lets you tell the club's administrators, and once they have done it you can come back and finish.
3. Open bookings, event entries or shop orders need to be closed by the club. The page lists them and the club is told automatically that you have asked to leave.

If you are leaving the club, it is courteous to tell the membership secretary as well.

Related guides

If you have not set up your account yet, start with joining your club online. For duty emails and swaps, see swapping a sailing club duty. Committee members looking at how the club handles personal data can read GDPR for sailing club committees. For everything members can do, see the member portal and member management.