GMM minutes - June 4, 2023

Start Time  4PM

End Time  6:30PM

Location: CSC Club House

Attendance

The meeting attendance was below quorum.

Reports 

Commodore:

Huge thank you to all of our volunteers: executive committee who spends countless hours, those who come out to teach and test members, our cooks, and every single on of you!  CSC would not exist without our volunteers.  

As of December 2022 all day leaders must complete a mandatory harassment training within 30 days of hire.  January 2023 we implemented a code of conduct that all members sign when joining CSC or renewing their membership.  Executive committee has also taken it upon themselves to make the supervisor harassment training mandatory for all members of the executive committee. We are working on setting up an online incident report system as well as creating a policy for reviewing reports: we will update members once this is live.  We are also working on setting up de-escalation training to resolve conflicts, as well as anti-bias education & training for executive committee and day leaders, if anyone else is interested we encourage you to take the training as well. 

*** (Volunteer spotlight) 

Part of the operating rules indicates that after 5 years of membership inactivity your rating will expire with a 30 day grace period to renew your membership, this is now implemented and you will receive an email notification.  There is a procedure on how to reinstate your membership.  

We are looking for a Thursday night racing chair. 

Huge thank you to our banquet chairs: ToeGee Tone, Jesse Homchand (and Michelle).

Vice Commodores:

Open house is off to a great start

As always thank you so much to our banquet chair Jesse and kitchen help and thank you Michele. And also a big thank you to all our open house volunteers.

Thank you also to our newest open house coordinator Ben Lee

We've had a few new open house coordinators in training. We're looking forward to working more with them. 

Today was our third month of doing open house this year

Today we had

123 adults

28 kids 

So far our total number 536

Adults 422

Kids 114

We're only getting started. There's still 5 more open houses this year:

Sunday July 16

Sunday August 20

Sunday Sept 3

Sunday Oct 1

Sunday Nov 19

1st Vice:

JY fleet needs help, please fix issues you see. First vice's are here to help, reach out if you have questions. We had several dismastings recently, please be careful and try not to stand on the masts. We have ordered 2 Toura and 2 Venture masts but we won't take delivery till August on those so we have one Toura out of commission till then and we don't have any spare venture masts. We are always looking for members to run repair clinics, let us know how we can help facilitate.

2nd Vice:

We’re pleased to announce that our windsurfing equipment is in a great condition for all 5 ratings. We added/replaced 6 novice boards, 8 junior boards, 4 foiling boards and 1 senior board. We’re operating at full capacity especially during the weekends. 

RACING: We have been experimenting with light wind races on novice boards, which turned out to be a blast.

JOIN WINDSURFING: If you have not begun your windsurfing journey yet, this is a good time to start, we have great certified instructors backed up with easy and modern beginners equipment. Check out the website for our weekly lessons and clinics. 

Breakage: if you break a piece of equipment please make sure to report it to Second Vice and they follow up with the appropriate instructions. Working with fiberglass is a great skill to learn, we teach board repair through organized clinics so keep an eye on the schedule for the upcoming events.

GENERAL GUIDANCE:

Inspect your gear before and after sailing.

Carry your sail properly.

Never step on a board sitting on the ground.

Never sail into the dock.

3rd Vice:

Third vice report:  fleet is in good condition.  Sea horse is down for new standing rigging and a broken boom.  It's been decades since we last broke a boom so we are working on sourcing a new one.  Coming up soon is a winch maintenance clinic and boat cleaning party so if you're looking to get involved with keelboats keep an eye out on the announce list for opportunities.

Rear commodores:

Rear Commodore for Windsurfing: 

Classes started in April and the season finally seems to be in full swing, with Novice I attendance starting to come up as we head toward the summer months.

Headline:

We've run 29 events in April and May (we did 21 and 25 the previous two years). Our numbers of new Novices over April and May are slightly higher than last year, which makes sense as this year I am adjusting start times rather than canceling Novice classes when low tides strike. Our numbers of new Juniors and J+ windsurfers is up over past years, which is exciting to see! Thanks to our Seniors for being available for testing so our up-and-coming windsurfers can advance.

Reminder of our goals for this season:

1. Extend instructor capacity (Novice AND Intermediate level instructor training)
2. Increased focus on skill progression in curriculum
3. Include on-the-water ratings tests in the lesson curriculum

Instructor Capacity

We ran another WIPA Level-1 certification and have seven more certified instructors. Nelz and I also developed an uncertified, shorter instructor class for Novice I which I'll be repeating in June. We filmed the first one and are looking for video editing volunteers to put together digestible chunks we can put on our YouTube channel as a resource. Will be running instructor training for the Novice II and III classes soon.

Skill Progression

We are in the early stages of experimenting with the three-class Novice sequence, which will theoretically get a new member from beginner to Junior Rating. I expect that we'll need a full season of data to measure the effectiveness of this experiment.

Ran an Open Q&A land lesson experiment that was not successful—few attendees. My hypothesis is that beginners don't feel they have well-formed questions and so the hour-long sessions were too amorphous to be attractive. Replacing these with skill-focused land-lessons, currently targeting uphaul, tack, and pivot jybe skills with the Q&A tacked on. Will see if this is more useful to students and adjust as needed.

Scheduled intermediate level classes and asked for volunteers to teach—working much better than last year's open call for volunteers to teach whatever they were interested in teaching.

Have also been scheduling self-organized Novice group practices so that a sense of community and camaraderie is fostered early on in member's experience of windsurfing.

Ratings Tests

I am scheduling our first drop-in ratings test in June. Our goal is to make it easier and less intimidating for Novice, Junior, and J+ windsurfers to earn their next rating.

General notes:

I've otherwise been working with John to make a number of process changes that I hope will make the student and instructor experience better, as well as streamline some of the workload in the Rear Commodore role.

• With John's new registration system, incoming Novice I students must take the written test prior to class. That has greatly increased the % of students who have taken the test prior to class. (Last year we ended up with a fair number of students who thought they were novices but had never taken the written test).
• John tweaked the event registration system so it takes me much less time to pass Novice I students on their Novice tests
• John helped me set up an automated email that goes out to members when they earn their Novice rating, which replaced an email I was sending by template manually after each class.
• Now much easier to delegate various components of the Rear Commodore workload to chair positions, which is a project for later this year or next year in order to make the job more sustainable for me or any future Rear Commodores

Thanks to the many instructors who pitch in to make our classes successful. I was out for a family emergency for the past two weeks, and everybody stepped up to keep things in the windsurfing program running smoothly.

Rear Commodore for Sailing: 

We are fully in the season but the tide has been impacting our dinghy teaching schedule. George Posner has a low tide skiff working, qualified DLs and VDLs to run it, and he has focused on keeping lessons going where possible. Thanks to George and the DLs and VDLs. I looked at the 3 months ending May 31 for 2019 and this year. Although we have 42% fewer teaching days than pre-COVID, we have taught only 13% fewer students. We are on average teaching 30% more students per Saturday teaching day now and twice as many per weekday teaching day. We have mostly been meeting the demand, but it’s a good time to remind you that you can record double hours for dinghy teaching on weekdays.

We continue to run behind on keelboat lessons offered compared to pre-COVID, but about equal to last year. The main problem has been instructor availability, and this has just improved. Congratulations to Birk Huber on earning the Full Senior rating, and Birk says he will be teaching keelboat lessons. Fast Track has started with the first session completed and the second starting in a week. Our new signup system is working well, allowing members to sign up for any future Fast Track and helping the coordinators manage the program easier. We have coordinators scheduled for every session. Thanks to Mike Jones, overall coordinator, and all those who are helping. We need lots of instructors and volunteers to pull these sessions off, and you can sign up to help on the website. Doing so at least the week before the session will help the coordinators manage it.

Advanced Dinghy has also started, and we have another full schedule. These are Monday evenings when there is no Fast Track and no holiday, and they focus on advanced, post-Junior skills. Anyone is welcome to attend the land talks, but the on-the-water sessions are limited to Juniors. The schedule is on the website.

We are doing focused dinghy workshops on Saturday afternoons every few weeks covering some of the more difficult Junior skills. Jiheng kicked it off with a Slow Sailing/COB session, and we have more to come. These will be announced on the list the week before the session. The next one is June 17, with Steve Burt on How to Sit, Steer, and Sheet: Effective Sailing Posture.

Our winter Senior Study Group concluded in May, and 7 participants passed the Senior Written

Test. Congratulations to them. As always, I will conclude by thanking all of the instructors who have kept our sailing program going at a very high level.

Port Captains:

Hi all,

First, I’d like to express my profound gratitude for the many Volunteer Day Leaders who have helped to keep the club open. Due to their efforts and the efforts of our paid staff, we have stayed open every day since I started in February. 

Second, I’m happy to report that due to increased DL training on and use of the low tide skiff, we have been able to extend the club’s open hours on several occasions, most recently for all of Memorial Day Weekend. We expect to add approximately 20 hours of sailing and windsurfing this year. 

Third, we are looking for two co-Port Captains, one to lead training and one to help with administrative matters. These roles will have zero “on call” component and zero responsibility for DL/VDL shift scheduling. If you or a member you know would like to help, please let me know at portcaptain@cal-sailing.org. On a related note, as Birk Huber steps down as co-Port Captain for Training I want to congratulate him for a job well done. 

Fourth, if you would like to become a DL or VDL, please let me know. We are always looking to deepen our bench and can run 1:1 training sessions at your convenience. 

Best,

George

Secretary:

The Secretaries started keeping track of mandatory supervisory harassment training documentation for ExComm which ultimately is approved via a white card endorsement.  This training is available for free to anyone at the CA.gov website. There's one for employees and one for supervisors. Only the 2-hour supervisory certificate qualifies for the white card endorsement for ExComm. The other is for DLs, which are handled by the Port Captain.  Excomm gets informed of training requirements through a welcome message when first joining ExComm.    

A new tracking system for club keys is now in place to centralize and standardize record keeping.  Members who have club keys can contact the secretary via email or on slack to make sure that the club has a record of it.  If you lose a key, let us know.  

Treasurer:

The treasurer report is available here and is part of this report.

Chairs

Marina Planning Chair (C. Antinori)

The chair gave an update of the club’s efforts to work with the city on their planning activities and ways for club members to be involved and engaged in the process.  Cal Adventures next door has been working with planners and architects for a potential rebuild and expansion of the site. Here, too, there is potential to collaborate and participate in the overall process.  People interested in this topic can find a discussion thread, information and documents on the #marina-planning Slack channel. 

Saturday Morning Teaching Chair: (Isha Mishra)

The chair gave an update on Saturday sailing lessons. Lessons start at 10 but people arrive before 9AM to get a spot in the queue.  Instructors are urged to arrive early and keep lesson time to 20 minutes per student to give all a chance of a lesson within a reasonable time.  On Saturday we expect that there is a single queue for lessons which takes precedence over personal sailing time.  

General Discussion

A discussion of the April incident followed the ExComm reports.