Port Explorers
at Port Melbourne Yacht Club
We've been cautious about sharing our young sailors' names and photos beyond direct emails to their own families. Here's why we're reconsidering that — and why we'd like to ask properly, rather than assume.
Until now, we've kept things simple: updates and photos about what our youth sailors have achieved have gone directly to the participants and their own parents — nothing shared more widely, and nothing posted online without asking first. Part of that is a discomfort with putting kids' names and faces online by default, the way sports clubs and schools often do without much thought. Part of it is also that managing individual consent properly is real work, and we hadn't built the process for it — so the answer, until now, has mostly been “we just haven't asked.”
A few things are changing our thinking.
The first, and the one that matters most to us, is inspiring other young people. A lot of kids never find their way onto the water because they've never seen someone like them doing it — and young people rarely make the first move on their own. A photo or a short story of a Port Explorer who's out there sailing can be what shows the next kid it's possible for them too. That's the best reason to say yes: not to help us, but to be the open door for someone who doesn't yet know this is for them.
The second is wanting our youth sailors to feel like a visible, valued part of the club community. PMYC's Flash newsletter is probably the best tool we have for that — it's sent to members, but realistically it's de facto public, so it deserves the same care as anything else we'd publish.
The third is more practical. Port Explorers is entirely volunteer-run, and we're reaching a point where we need more boats — including some bigger ones, like the RS Quest we currently share with the youth sailors. To attract grants, donations, and run any kind of dedicated fundraising, we need to be able to show, not just tell, what an active youth sailing programme looks like. The club more broadly relies on the same kind of story to keep the support of the local community and council — being able to demonstrate an active youth programme matters for that too. These are real reasons that matter for keeping the programme going.
So we're putting the effort into doing this properly: asking each family — and each young sailor directly, not just through their parents — exactly what they're comfortable with, channel by channel. Not a blanket yes, and nothing assumed. If the answer is no to some or all of it, that's completely fine and has no effect on anyone's place in the programme.
You can change your mind at any time — just email gregor@ausail.ing or let us know in person.