Little Ship Club 2015-2016 Annual Report

Vice-Commodore’s report

Through Christmas 2015 a huge amount of time and effort was invested in building and populating our new website, concurrent with the design and publication of a hard-copy A4 2016 calendar (which has proven very popular and useful and which we are looking to repeat in 2017). The website has received more than 11,567 ‘unique’ visitors and a sub-total of 869,116 ‘hits’ in its first 9½ months; adding hits from search engine robots brings the total to more than 1.6m to date. Since accepting the Flag reins from David Cameron my prior volunteer focus on producing the monthly eNews expanded ten-fold with a more comprehensive remit on marketing our Club and enhancing Member communications. Social media has seen a surge and steady increase in our Club’s Facebook page ‘likes’ – up 56% since February and by 78% since October 2015 to currently stand at 1,026 – and more than 2,400 visits.* When writing a Vice-Commodore’s Report, it can be difficult to confine oneself to the portfolio, given that our Constitution does not give Flag Officers other than the Commodore any specific remit. If the Commodore stays hale and present and does not, by personal appointment, appoint a subordinate Flag to a standing committee chair, there are no duties. The Constitutional duties of the Commodore are onerous by the standards that apply in other paramilitary organisations. There is an argument that the position should separate the role of ‘Commander of the Fleet’/’Chairman of the Board’ on one hand from that of ‘Chief Executive Officer’ on the other. Under the current Constitution, at Part 45[e], the Fishing Section, the Game Fish Section and the Sailing Section Captains “…must be prepared to serve as Directors…”

Our monthly eNews went into recess after the July 2016 edition due to the pressure of my professional design work commitments, which also scuppered any prospect of updating our Club’s history book this year; both projects are intended to resume after the end of October 2016. Notwithstanding, in August we were able to publish a refreshed and revised Club brochure and much of the print run of 5,000 has now been shared with our transport, travel, tourism and island venue partners. As with the A4 calendar, collaboration with our business supporters enabled both items to be economically produced at little cost to our Club – in the case of the brochure, less than four cents per copy – great examples of what can be achieved through working collectively There is no provision for what to do if, despite this, a section elects a captain who is unwilling or unable to serve as one of the directors required in Part 40[d]. An unwillingness to bear the Director’s liability to and for the whole Club when executive control is exercised over a small part of it sounds reasonable. Further confusing the interpreter of the document, the section captains are described as “ex officio” Board members, while having full voting rights. This is an apparent contradiction. While it is clear to me at least that the Constitution is ripe for a review (the last amendments being voted on in 2008 and 2010), for the present the urgent consideration is to keep the sections captains as ex officio Board members without compelling them to be Directors. To this end I have proposed a motion to amend the Constitution. Chris Goodhew Vice-Commodore

Rear-Commodore’s report Appointed February 2016

for shared goals. Matthew Tesch Rear-Commodore Director – Communications

*As at 9th October 2016

AR.4 Annual Report 2015–2016

Little Ship Club (Queensland Squadron)