BIFFA Membership – Club League Table….

Do you remember that for many years BIFFA used to publish in the year book, a table of the total boat owning BIFFA members ranked by Club – so you can see where FFers are still paying their BIFFA fees!!

A few days ago we wrote about where we think the fleet sizes might be based upon what you can access on the BIFFA website – which is a lot more like an owners register…. if you spot the difference between that and a members register….

The number of Clubs with a Flying Fifteen Owner (and BIFFA member) really surprised me – it is about 80 !!  I think we declare that we have 48 Fleets and about 32 Fleets who run Open Meetings. So we have a ‘long tail’ beyond merely Fleets….  I had to ask Mike Firth what qualified as a recognised “Fleet” – Mike said it was 6 boats.  As Fleet status would be recognised by BIFFA, I guess this actually means “6 Boat Owning BIFFA Members”….??   Now how many Fleets do we have on that basis??? ….  Just about 20……

Here we go… From the up to date list of paid up boat owning BIFFA Members. This is where they are……

28 Hayling

23 Grafham

24 Royal Windermere (though note that the Windermere Clubs together have 37, making them the largest local community of FFers by far)

19 Bewl and Parkstone

17 Dovestone

16 Derwent

15 Datchet

11 Llangorse, Chew, Draycote, Northampton

9 Solent, Loch Lomond, RMYC Poole

7 Burton

6 Broxbourne, Carsington, RYA, South Windermere

So that is where the line would be drawn for 6 members per Fleet minimum….. But let me go on in case you are wondering….

5 South Cerney, Cardiff Bay (Hurrah for my club of the 1960s, PMBSC!)

4 Bassenthwaite, Queen Mary, Solway, Clywedog, Loch Ard, Middle Nene

3 Holy Loch, Lerwick, Loch Earn, Loch Tummel,  Notts County, Royal Torbay, Rutland, Ullswater

Then there’s a long list of 2 members and 1 member.  I hope your fleet is listed there and there are no great surprises. My feeling is that if Fleet Captain’s can get their BIFFA memberships up, the table would look very different.

Biffa Secreatary, Keith Jamieson, tells me that you have to be a BIFFA member to race a Fifteen at RWYC…. Interesting idea – we shall certainly debate that at our Club too….