Welcome to CSC!

The Cal Sailing Club is a non-profit, volunteer-run sailing club in Berkeley

Membership costs just $99 for 3 months ($89 for students and seniors) plus 2 hours volunteer work and there are no charges for lessons, equipment use, cruises, or other club activities.  Choose About CSC for more information, to join, See plans and pricing.

Once you've signed up, you'll need your Membership #  from your invoice or confirmation email.  If you forget that, check with the dayleader (they have the list of current members) or better yet, login again with your username and password and go to Account Info .  

Welcome aboard! Welcome to CSC!

 

August General Membership Meeting

August 27, 2017


6 PM in the CSC Yard after the Open House.  Get out on the water in the afternoon and join us for dinner and officer reports in the evening. See you there!  PS read Stella's quarterly financial statement here.

 

 

Advanced Windsurfing Classes - Every Sunday in August

8/6 @ 1:00 PM – Tacking, Sailing Without a Centerboard, Rigging This clinic is targeted at Novices looking to sharpen their tacks for the Junior test. We’ll also cover rigging a sail from scratch, which is required for the J+ rating.

 8/13 @ 1:00 PM – Getting in the Harness and Footstraps You’re comfortable with 4.x sails on breezy days, but your arms get tired and you’re getting passed by guys blazing by on tiny boards. We’ll cover getting into the harness, which will prolong your sailing sessions and make you go fast, and getting in the footstraps, which transfers the speed to your board.

 8/20 @ 1:00 PM – Waterstarting Part 1 Uphauling stinks, and it gets worse as you advance to larger, heavier sails, and smaller, sinkier boards. Waterstarting is the single most valuable skill that will improve your sailing experience. We’ll introduce flying the rig and getting up out of the water.

 8/27 @ Noon – Waterstarting Part 2, Intro to Freestyle Now you can fly the rig but every time you try to waterstart, you round up into the wind or catapult. We’ll cover how to fix that and also open the door to Freestyle with Backwinding. Backwinding will vastly improve your sense of board and sail balance and make you’re your tacks snappy. Note the earlier start time due to Open House.

 Lessons will be tailored to the skill level of those who show up. All skill levels are welcome, from Novice to Senior! I guarantee you’ll learn something or be able to pass on some of your own hard-earned experience.

If you’d like to help teach any of the classes, let me know.

Final Fast Track of the Year - August 14-18

The lastof 5 Junior Sailing Fast Tracks is the first week of May,Monday through Friday (May 1The id-5). Fast Track is a lot of lesson and practice time condensed into one week. To enroll in the Fast Track, you need to have all of your Junior Skipper requirements completed except for the practical (on-the-water) test. Specifically, you will need the following done by August13, club dock time:

  • - Signup on the Student Registration form
  • - Have entered and approved 4 hours of Volunteer Time (2 for your quarterly membership, and 2 for a one-time testing requirement)
  • - Passed the Junior Sailing Written Test
  • - Passed the Dinghy Sailing Rigging Test

You need to come to all 5 sessions. The idea of Fast Track is to move you toward your Junior Skipper rating. Testers will be available later in the week for those who are ready (we hope the winds will be, also, as it has to be above 10 knots to give the test). Even if you don't get your rating that week, you'll come out of it a much better sailor and much closer to your rating.

Fast Track starts at 5pm and goes to 9pm each day(we'll start as soon as boats are in the water and students and instructors are ready to go). Dinner is provided by kitchen volunteers.

Space is limited to 15 students. The first 15 people to complete all of the pre-requisites will get a spot in the Fast Track. 

We also need lots of instructors, Senior testers, and kitchen volunteers to make everything sun smoothly. More details are provided in the Student Registration form.  Instructors and Senior Skipper testers, please sign up by contacting Mike. If you do not have email, contact Mike via the Day Leader.

Mike Chapman is the Fast Track coordinator.Feel free to email Mike with any questions or concerns.

Open House Dates for 2017

During Open Houses we offer FREE introductory sailboat rides to the general public aboard our fleet of keelboats and dinghies. Children must be at least 5 years of age and accompanied by an adult. Each Open House runs from 1-4pm on the dates listed above. More detailed information is here.

Please try to arrive early as, depending on the conditions and the amount of people, the sign-up/rides may end before 4pm.Come on down and get out on the bay! Already a member? Come on down and help out! The 2017 Open House Schedule is below:

  • Sunday, February 12
  • Sunday, March 26
  • Saturday, April 8- Coincides with the Berkeley Bay Festival! (cancelled due to weather)
  • Sunday, May 28
  • Sunday, June 25
  • Sunday, July 23
  • Sunday, August 27
  • Sunday, September 24
  • Sunday, October 22
  • Sunday, November 19

Junior Sailing Fast Track Dates for 2017

Fast Track is a program of intensive instruction to help move you to your Junior rating. It's a full lweek of intensive instruction – 1 instructor for 2 students from about 5 or 5:30 pm to sunset, Monday through Friday, with testers available. These are the dates for this year. Details and pre-requisites will be announced as the dates approach:

  • May 1-5
  • June 5-9
  • July 10-14
  • July 31 – August 4
  • August 14-18

 

News

New Instructional Video on Rigging a Quest

Jack Chen produced this, and it covers inspecting, rigging and reefing a Quest, including putting the boat in the water with the hoist. You can also find it in our library of instructional videos at Lessons->Sailing->Videos.

 

Photos of Berkeley Reef at Ultra Low Tide Show Why to Keep a Safe Distance

Sheldon Coad took these photos with the help of Robert Ofsevit, Bobby Arthurs, and the club skiff. They circled the Reef and took photos in several directions. Pretty impressive when you see it, and pretty dangerous when you can't.

Windsurfing Rating Requirements Updated and How to Get to Senior

Click here for a more detailed description of the windsurfing rating requirements. We have also started something to help you get your Senior rating. To see how it works, click here. 

We're recycling Bahia hulls

As the Quests come online, we need to decomission Bahias (the yard isn't getting larger and some of the Bahia hulls are in bad shape). We've sold a couple, and we've started cutting up and recycling others.

Common practice for gettting rid of a boat is to abandon it in a waterway, which is a big problem for a lot of reasons (see the CA DBW web site for details). 

Here are some photos of what we did to one hull that was unsafe (it was cracked and took on water). This may be the first time a hull owned by DBW was disposed of by recycling rather than putting it in a landfill as is required for fiberglass (when we get a boat via a DBW grant, DBW retains title to it, which is the case here).  The hull had to be cut into dozens of pieces to fit in the tiny pickup truck that carried it to the recycler.  Cutting it up with a sawzall was easy since the plastic is soft. The plastic will be used for packaging and products that will be here in a few months.

Want to get a rating/sign-off but don't know who can do it?

Click here to see who can sign off on which ratings/tests/check-outs (e.g., the Day Leader can sign off on Novice Windsurfer written and self-rescue). If you are logged-in to the website, you will be able to see a list of members who have the qualification needed (e.g., a list of those signed-off on the Quest who can then sign-off others). This link is also visible when you look at your White Card on the website.

The Quests are here!

We are replacing the Bahias with RS Quests because we can no longer get parts for the Bahias. We have 2 Quests in the fleet and are commissioning 2 more. We will get another 2 by the summer. As we bring up Quests, we'll decommission Bahias (there's only so much room in the yard, and it also generates parts so we can keep a few Bahias going for a much longer time).

They are fun boats, very similar to the Bahias, in fact desinged by the same person. A foot shorter, a tiny bit wider, draws the same with centerboard down, and a bit more nimble. The gennaker is easier to hoist/dowse, but the boat is a little harder to right after a capsize. John Shearer has written a great description of the differences here. We will be including rigging instructions in the CSC How to Sail a Dinghy Manual and probably doing a couple of videos on it.

To sail the boat, you must have a rating (Novice is OK) and you must be checked out in it by someone already checked out. It's a simple procedure, just showing you the rigging differences between it and a Bahia. So check it out and get checked out.

Sailing Lessons on Demand is Back

Can't make the normal Monday, Thursday, Saturday sailing lessons? Or just want some extra focused time in smaller groups? Then this is for you. A small number of instructors are making themselves available for lessons outside the normal sessions. To see the details and a list of instructors and what they teach, go to Lessons->Sailing->Lessons on Demand. You will have to login to the site to see the contact information for the instructors.

 
2017 Lessons
  • Beginning Dinghy Sailing lessons on Saturday mornings and Monday and Thursday afternoons.
  • Keelboat lessons on Wednesday evenings. 
  • Windsurf lessons are held on sunny, breezy Saturday mornings, and on Sunday mornings too when the warm weather begins.

Please see the lessons page for more information. Get to the club early!

 

 

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