GMM minutes - August 20, 2023

Start Time:  6PM

End Time:  7PM

Location: CSC Club House

Attendance

Reports

Commodore: Nicho/Mariya

Thank you to John there is now an online incident reporting system.  Thank you to all the volunteers, CSC would not exist without you!!!  If you are looking for volunteer opportunities reach out to excomm.  Reminder we have an online blog, if you have anything to share!  Also please email communication chair for newsletter submissions, or if you are interested in helping with the newsletter.

August 30th we'll be hosting a diverse group of Berkeley leaders for an introduction to sailing.

Vice Commodores: Christina/Min

Open house has been going really well. Thank you for all who have come to volunteer.  Thank you to Jesse and our kitchen helpers for cooking. Next open house will be on Sunday Sept 3rd. Come out and get your volunteer hours and enjoy the day with your fellow club members.

1st Vice: Memo & James

We are implementing rigging sign-offs for all boats in the fleet except for Quests. There is a lot of variability in rigging and we think this is causing damage to the boats when they are not rigged properly. Expect an update on this soon.

Reminder to always tension your rig, this will help prevent damage to the mast.

We have 2 Toura and 2 Venture rigs on order. It takes us 2-3 months to get these, and they should finally be arriving in the next couple of weeks.

2nd Vice: Sofi/Ted

Our equipment is in a great standing. We recently replaced 4 senior boards Added 10 small booms and replaced 4 old foils with new ones.

If you or your kids are interested in getting into foiling/ learn about racing on foil, l we have a special guest coming next weekend: B Lindsay F4 foils team rider, PWA and olympic athlete. She will be leading a demo/clinic to inspire youth to get into racing on foil… F4 will be donating one full set of race foil to one of the youngsters and another one to CSC.

3rd Vice: no report

Rear commodores:

Rear Commodore for Windsurfing: Randi S. (she, her)

The windsurfing program has been busy this summer! We reported April/May data at the last GMM, so this is June and July full month data. Spoiler for August: windsurfing has been VERY popular this month already!

Headline:

We ran 45 classes & events in June and July (10 more than the same period last year), including a couple on-the-water ratings testing sessions.

213 members have earned their Novice windsurfing rating as of end of July this year, about 60 more than this time last year. Junior ratings are on par with last year and we have twice as many J+ ratings so far this year.

Thanks to our Seniors for testing so our up-and-coming windsurfers!

General notes:

Thanks, also, to the many instructors who pitch in to make our classes successful. Over June and July, our windsurfing instruction has run on probably at least 230 volunteer hours!! If you haven't already volunteered to teach, please consider it: it's fun to share the windsurfing joy with others, and, even if you don't feel like an expert, you know much more than our brand new windsurfers and have plenty to share.

Rear Commodore for Sailing: John B.

We are nearing the end of a busy season with all activities going strong.

Comparing the last 3 months of dinghy lessons with the same period in 2019 (pre-COVID), we are seeing the same pattern we've been seeing earlier this year - fewer lesson days because of tides, but teaching more students per day. During the week, we are teaching significantly more students per day. We also have a number of newer members teaching.

We've been doing land lessons on low tide Saturdays, including a fantastic new workshop on body position, tiller management, and tacking put together by Steve Burt. These essentials are harder to teach on the water, so a great use of low tide time.

Our last  Fast Track this year starts Monday. This years program has been exceptionally well run, thanks to overall coordinator Mike Jones and the 10 session co-coordinators, along with all of the instructors, testers, cooks, and other helpers. Amazingly, several seniors who have moved out of the area have returned to help with Fast Track.

Our keelboat program is improving, thanks to additional instructors, and we are turning away fewer students – about 30% of signups compared to 50% of signups earlier this year.

Looking at ratings earned in the last 3 months, we have 50% more new Juniors than in 2022, and just 13% fewer than in 2019. New novices are new seniors were about the same in all 3 years.

Looking ahead, we are planning a new instructor workshop focused on teaching skills, not content – that is, how to teach well rather than how to teach specific skills. We will announce this shortly, and we will offer it several times this year. We already have a Senior Study Group coordinator for next winter, Erik Latrope, and we will be organizing this in late October or early November. We are planning a First Aid/CPR class in early December, taught by Backcountry Medical Guides, and we will pull this together in October.

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:

port captain report as delivered at GMM:

• Birk Huber & Audrey Yen have come on board as Port Captains.
• David Elias has stepped into the new position of Day Leader Coordinator.
• We are well covered with day leaders coming into the fall and are not actively recruiting.
• We have also added standing shifts that can be claimed by dayleaders who would like to stay active and are revamping the day leader manual, training requirements and as a consequence are reconsidering all VDL ratings , if you have a VDL rating or are interested in being an active day leader please get in touch with the port captains.

Secretary:  if you need a key, see us.

Treasurer: Peter Kuhn

Treasurer’s Financial Report for the Quarter May through July 2023

As of August 1st we had $130,512 in the bank accounts, up $59,417 from 5/1/23.  We also have a $10,000 Series I savings bond.  Regular membership dues for the quarter were 22% higher than was expected before Covid, while weather in May and July (data not yet available for all of June) scored 13% lower than the average of the preceding five years.

 Big thanks to everyone who worked hard for the club!

Chairs Reports:

Conduct: Lisa Dinh

Sunday August 6th CSC hosted TrailMixed Collective, a non-profit that supports women of color in sports. Thank you to instructors and volunteers: Alyssa, Anne M, Aradhna M, Janina, Karly O, Leah H, Lisa D, Manny V, Maureen M, Penny W, and Peter W for all their hard work and energy. We were able to welcome around 16 new women of color to the sport of sailing-- of which over 50% had never been in a boat before.  Ages from 21-55. We hope to do more events like this in the future. Interested in volunteering with us? Email Lisa Dinh at t.dinh@columbia.edu.

Future ideas / projects in the works include:

• painting murals, deescalation/antibias training, 101 events, blog featuring diverse sailors, partnering with more nonprofits, mentoring, partnering with science of sailing org, updating the website to showcase support for DEI

Youth: David Elias

Marina Planning Chair: Camille Antinori

Important Upcoming marina meetings:

• Friday, September 8 or before: Release of Draft Specific Plan
• Saturday, September 23: Draft Specific Plan Community Feedback Meeting
• Thursday, November 2: City Council Special Meeting for WSP

9/23 will be an in-person meeting and very important for our members to attend as well as 11/2.

Anyone who attends and shares notes to post in Slack can earn volunteer hours.  Our roles - Note that at meetings, we are generally representing ourselves individually as marina users.  We can identify as club members even if we ultimately speak for ourselves.  CSC is not creating official club statements on Waterfront Specific Plan as a whole, since we are not exactly a political organization.

General Discussion

Is ferry (i.e. the WETA/city version) a done-deal?  Response - it seems like that and city staff/officials highly vested in it and put out that vibe.  However, the Cesar Chavez people were highly successful in stopping out-of-touch ideas from happening in CCP, and the parks commission has delivered an alternative report/plan on the waterfront to the city council that is more in line with current uses, includes pier as part of plan and addresses financial reform. It remains to be seen if city incorporates anything commission suggests.

Various ideas raised about how we can meet to discuss these issues and generate talking points. Possibly a follow up meeting can be arranged.