CASE STUDIES
Sussex Yacht Club
Active sailing club with moorings
Sussex Yacht Club is one of the oldest in the UK, founded in 1892 in the Sussex town of Shoreham-by-Sea. It is a popular local club with around 1,800 members and enviable facilities on the River Adur and at Shoreham Port. The SYC bar is famous for hospitality on both sides of the Channel, and the restaurant boasts the best river views in Shoreham.
SYC has an active rally and racing yacht fleet and a dinghy section where particular attention is given to encouraging youth sailors. There is a busy dive contingent, and Sussex Sailability operates from SYC supporting handicapped sailors. The Club has been an RYA Training Centre for over 25 years, delivering shore based and practical courses for all abilities.
WE LIKE BEST
Batch invoicing
Bulk emails
Visual mapping
Document upload
Reporting
WHY HARBOUR ASSIST
With the administration team busy managing the moorings, pontoons, membership, and commercial activities, it was clear there was a need for a single coordinating system. Sailing club software didn’t seem to meet the need for mooring management, so the Club team looked at marina management software, settling on Harbour Assist.
“Harbour Assist came out as the one that would suit us and the staff”, said training administrator, Paula Fox. “It seemed clear and user-friendly“.
“It’s quite straightforward and seamless.”
IMPLEMENTATION & SUPPORT
Harbour Assist’s marina management functions delivered what SYC needed for moorings allocation ‘out of the box’, and careful consideration during the set-up ensured that membership and other club-based activities were integrated from the start. “They talked through our membership process and made it work for us”, said Paula Fox.
Paula explained: “The training was very comprehensive, and the support we had in the first month really got us going”. The admin team now handle all staff training in-house and have started to get the yard team more involved by managing maintenance on the system. Paula highlighted the quality of self-help product support in the online Help & Docs, which cover all elements of the system and are searchable
BENEFITS
Sussex Yacht Club uses Harbour Assist for all invoicing, membership services, managing mooring allocation, member communications and internal tasking. The outside team are starting to use the system for maintenance scheduling and shoreside boat movements, and there’s potential to manage training courses on the new Booking Request feature.
Paula Fox explained that the admin team like having all the information in one place: “We have all of the membership detail alongside members’ boat and mooring information and it’s all easy to read at-a-glance”. She said that the team also rated the ability to upload and track documents and the amount of detail covered by the standard reporting suite.
The flexibility designed-into Harbour Assist means that the system is easily adapted to manage activities such as membership, events and rentals.
“It works for the Club and the staff”.