A day in the life of a volunteer 

Meet Kevin Headon from Sussex Yacht Club

“The biggest thing for me is retaining the culture of volunteering at the club. I’ve always been a strong advocate of volunteering and believe it helps make a club more sustainable. The depth and strength of our volunteer base is our greatest asset.”

Sometimes you meet someone you think must have been handed a divine right to more hours in the day than everyone else. Kevin Headon, Training Principal at Sussex Yacht Club, is one of those people.

By ‘day’ Kevin runs a successful engineering firm, with some 90 employees working for him, while also holding directorships for two other companies.

In his other life Kevin, is a tour de force in driving sailing participation in the South East, not only helping drag Sussex YC from being a well intentioned but disorganised outfit into an RYA Club of the Year finalist in a decade, but also sitting on committees for the RYA South East Region and West Sussex Schools’ Sailing Association (WSSSA).

He is also a Trustee of Sussex Sailability, the training co-ordinator at Shoreham SC and works on offshore opportunities in partnership with Fairview Sailing!

Having grown up in a family of boat builders, and learned to walk on a boat his mum was delivering, it was inevitable Kevin would end up involved in sailing in someway.

But not even he could have envisaged just how pivotal a role the sport would play in his life. He is very glad it did though.

“I enjoy the sport of sailing, and believe it is a great leveler with all ages, genders and abilities participating together. I like the fact you can build teams in the sport and I get a lot out of seeing people taking advantage of the opportunities we give them and going to themselves play a full and active role in keeping the club going.

“We have a structured and successful way of developing instructors in-house and I think it’s really important to keep doing that. We want their enthusiasm to come from being part of a strong, committed team that helps them develop and improves their personal skills across the whole range of different activities.

“I think if we started paying instructors we would lose the very essence of what has made this club so successful over the past few years. We have a very, very high retention rate in our Youth sailors in becoming instructors, and making them feel part of something where they can contribute has been central to this.”

Kevin is the first to stress the club’s success wouldn’t be possible without the hours and commitment put in by a huge number of people over the years.

But, despite having to have his arm initially twisted to run one adult dinghy course at the then chief instructor-less recognised RYA Training Establishment, Kevin is proud of the role he has go on to play in the club becoming what it is today.

The number of club boats has gone from four to 42, now an RYA OnBoard club, youth numbers have swelled from 20 to 160, Sailability members total over 150, Tuesday family night regularly attracts over 50 sailors, and an initiative Kevin drove for in-house sailing instructors has seen around 40 AIs and 25 instructors qualified, including a group of profoundly deaf sailors who run courses for the deaf.

Last year five Shoreham Youth Team sailors, the club’s youth section, competed at the Sonar Worlds in the USA for the first time while Kevin also takes the club’s junior sailors to race at WSSSA Topper Traveller events and organises the safety boats.

A culture of ‘bartering’ in fundraising has also been instilled and in return for corporate sailing days Kevin has successfully struck up fruitful supplier relationships with many local companies, while others contribute funds to Sailability.

His biggest success story is that now all the club’s five main activities during the week are pretty much run by instructors who have progressed from the Youth ranks.

However he remains the eyes and ears, making sure the club doesn’t rest on its laurels and that the volunteer conveyor belt keeps churning out the Principals, committee members and instructor trainers of the future.

He added: “I have to be very hands-on. So much activity goes on in the county but if you’re not careful everyone picks the same Saturday and dilutes who can do what. By being across everything I try to make sure all the activities are amalgamated and coordinated. All the instructors we train up are encouraged to think in the same way.

“Every Wednesday evening we have personal development sessions for instructors and I think it’s really important to do a lot of team stuff.

“I’ve always been someone who sees possibilities and doesn’t like to be told no that can’t be done. With a bit of planning and good project management you can make most things happen. You just got to have the enthusiasm, will and support.”

Kevin was presented with an RYA Volunteer Award for Outstanding Contribution in 2007 by HRH The Princess Royal.