Sailability Manual – Info HUB
Club & Program Handbook · Chapter 2
Administration & Record Keeping
The everyday paperwork that keeps a program safe, insured and compliant — enrolments, insurance, RevSport, records, and privacy.
These guidelines are adapted from the Operating Standards and Guidelines for Australian Sailing Discover Sailing Centres. The Executive Committee highly recommends reading and following the Australian Sailing standards for best practice; the key points are highlighted below.
Administrative guidelines
Enrolment & medical declarations
Booking and enrolment forms should capture any pre-course requirements and emergency contacts, and should seek a medical declaration as part of enrolment. If you’re aware a participant has a medical condition, seek further advice from them and/or their carers and brief instructors and volunteers accordingly — especially important if someone attends on their own.
In the unlikely event of an emergency, you need to know what to pass on to emergency services (allergies, conditions), and be aware of pre-existing injuries when helping someone from the water — e.g. a person with reduced sensation in their lower limbs may not feel ropes around their legs, which may not be visible in murky water.
Credentials & induction
Record instructor and volunteer credentials and keep them up to date (instructor qualifications can be checked through RevSport). All instructors, volunteers and members should complete induction training in running the program and sign that they have read and understood the Operating and Safety Procedures.
Clubs and centres working with children and young people under 18 must have a child protection policy and procedures in place, including a current Working with Children Check for all volunteers. See Chapter 3 · Risk & Safety for the detail.
Incident reporting & feedback
Record the details of any incident or injury on the relevant form (below). These are reviewed by the Committee, followed up if required, and any lessons learned are shared. A customer feedback system should also be in place, with complaints addressed as quickly as possible.
- Incident Report Form: revolutionise.com.au/vicsailability/incident
- Injury Report Form: revolutionise.com.au/vicsailability/injury
Insurance
Each club or program is responsible for ensuring adequate insurance covering all of its activities — ashore and afloat — is in full force while the program is recognised by Sailability Victoria. Disclose all activities to your insurer so nothing is left uncovered.
| Cover | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Public Liability | At least AU $10 million, for activities both afloat and ashore. |
| Member & Volunteer Personal Accident | Required for members and volunteers involved in Sailability activities. |
| Marine Equipment | All boats (including rescue vessels) owned by Sailability Victoria must be insured. |
Stand-alone and club programs must insure all boats they own. Equipment owned by a host yacht club is generally covered for sailing and training, but policies for any privately owned equipment should be endorsed for use in Sailability activities.
Australian Sailing qualified instructors, once they’ve completed and paid their annual registration, are covered by Australian Sailing’s Coaches/Instructors liability policy while delivering an Australian Sailing program at a recognised Discover Sailing Centre. For help arranging cover, Australian Sailing’s official provider is Network Marine Insurance Brokers (see Australian Sailing → Insurance for clubs).
RevSport
Affiliated programs can use Sailability Victoria’s RevSport system to manage records and communications. It’s privacy compliant, regularly backed up, and customer records aren’t visible to other clubs. RevSport lets you:
- Administer all customer records and generate attendance lists.
- Email or SMS participants (e.g. reminders).
- Take online registrations and payments, avoiding paperwork and manual data entry.
- Promote your course to the public on the Discover Sailing websites.
- Record course completions so certificates and qualifications flow through to each sailor’s mySailor record.
Record every customer in every course in RevSport on enrolment and within 48 hours of the course commencing. This is what makes non-member participants covered by Australian Sailing Personal Accident Insurance.
Record keeping
An accurate record of volunteers and participants in all Sailability activity must be maintained and stored by affiliated programs. Good records let you track participation and membership numbers, communicate effectively about activities, and provide accurate information for insurance. Keeping records is a requirement of member clubs of Australian Sailing and Sailability Victoria.
All records must be kept secure and confidential in accordance with privacy law (below).
Privacy & data protection
Because programs collect participants’ emergency contacts and medical/health details, handling that information carefully isn’t optional — it’s a legal obligation.
The manual historically referenced the Victorian Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014, but that Act mainly binds public-sector bodies. As a charity that holds participants’ health information, Sailability Victoria and its clubs are covered by the Commonwealth Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) — regardless of turnover. In practice: treat the APPs as applying to your program.
What your program should do
- Have a privacy policy available to anyone who deals with the program, explaining how you collect, use, store and share personal information.
- Explain why you’re collecting information at the point you collect it (on enrolment and medical-declaration forms), and only collect what you actually need.
- Use it only for the purpose you disclosed — don’t repurpose participant data (e.g. for unrelated marketing) without consent.
- Get consent for health information — health data is “sensitive information” under the APPs.
- Keep it secure — store medical and personal records safely, with access limited to those who need it, and share medical details with instructors/volunteers on a need-to-know basis for participant safety.
- Let people access and correct their information on request, and dispose of it securely when it’s no longer needed.
OAIC guidance for sporting clubs and not-for-profits & charities, and the Australian Privacy Principles. A practical step: publish one short Sailability Victoria privacy policy that affiliated programs can adopt.