CAL SAILING CLUB

GENERAL MEMBER MEETING 11/29

29 NOVEMBER 2023 / 7:00 PM / BERKELEY YACHT CLUB 

ATTENDEES

No quorum.

AGENDA

Co-Commodores

Vice Commodores

First Vices

Second Vices

Rear Commodore

Secretary

Port Captain

Treasurer Report

Wrap Up

NOTES

Co-Commodore Remarks (Nicho, Mariya)

Co-commodores thank the kitchen for the food. Graeme for facilitating securing the BYC venue at a good rate. 

Christina steps down from her Ex-Com as co-vice commodore after a long and accomplished tenure. Thanks for all the work! Welcome Isha & Dennis as vice-commodores and Min is continuing in the role. 

Notes from Graeme:

BYC is a member only club but initiation fees are waived for all CSC Juniors (and above) and for those who have a boat berthed at the Berkeley Marina. Dues are $80 monthly. 

State DBW Grant

Thank you Allen Write, Peter K and excomm for completing the annual DBW grant.  This year we have used the grant to purchase novice windsurf boards and sails, a third Toura, and keelboat outboard motor, and remaining funds to pay for instructor training and dayleader wages during Open Houses.  For next year, we’ve applied for funding to buy more novice windsurf boards and sails, foulies, wetsuits, life jackets, and Quest sails.

DEI Initiative

Our DEI chairs Lisa and Alex have come up with a list of DEI initiatives that include working with the Berkeley Marina on equitable access to water after a successful event in the summer.

Marina BMASP Plan

Marina BMASP plan: the letter crafted from many CSC members and forwarded to the working groups was very well received - thanks to all who participated and made this happen.

There is more work on this - a meeting in January will discuss the plan and volunteer hours can be gained from attending and advocating for the marina.

Weather Station

It’s broken and it’s hard to find a good place for a new one - work on this is ongoing. Nicho is taken on a senior project too look into a possibly replacing the current weather station for CSC. 

Volunteer Hours

Members are required to complete 2 work hours every quarter, 10 hours for  seniors in addition to the membership fee . And some ratings require one-time work hours (Sailing and Windsurf Junior and also Windsurf Junior+). Beginning December 1, 2023, we will start deducting hours automatically for membership renewal and rating upgrade and allow balances to go negative. If you have a negative balance as a result, your membership will be active and your rating will be valid, but you will get an email warning you about this.

Beginning January 1, 2024, we will start enforcing this. The Dinghy and Windsurf Signout system will now allow you to sign out equipment if you have a negative work hour balance. 

Additional Thanks

Thank you Alyssa Lichenstein for setting up a merchandise website: https://calileggings.com/collections/cal-sailing-club-shop

More thanks to all volunteers, chairs, instructors and all who contribute to the club.

Membership Survey

Help us improve, take a survey. Link here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSck2skr-7C68_xDZgRFuh3bv35xwhsGVdmvUO0Q41gpmxCIjg/viewform?usp=sf_link

Vice Commodore Report

We held eight open houses this year and the total number of rides given were 1492 (1129 adults and 363 minors). This is up 42% from last season and capsize went down (from 5 to 2).

Open house helps us when we apply for the DBW grant in addition to drawing in membership and promoting boating safety. We really appreciate all the volunteers that make it happen and hope you'll be back when we start up again around March.

We are seeking someone to fill the role of banquet chair (BC) for next season. Please let us know if you're interested or know someone who might be a good fit.

Lastly, big thank you to Jesse for serving as BC for two seasons and went above the call of duty. In addition to cooking for the open houses, holiday party, fast track, etc, he and his team of volunteers got our kitchen back in working order after the pandemic and set a good structure for the next BC to thrive. 

Please reach out to Vice Commodores if you have any ideas for community events or groups that we could engage with for 2024, as we continue to expand our community outreach. 

We’re looking for someone to take on the role of Saturday Coordinating Chair. Please reach out to ishamishra20@gmail.com if you are interested. Additionally, we are always looking for more Saturday Coordinators - you receive 10 volunteer hours each time you do it. 

First Vice Report

Memo and James

• It has been about 6 months since we rolled out the digital equipment signout system. Seems to be working fairly smoothly, if you have any trouble- please find me or send an email
• We implemented a signoff for JY15s, and haven't heard any complaints so far.
• Coming next, signoff for Venture and Toura. It will be similar, web based, 4-5 questions.
• Fleet is in relatively good shape.  We finally got our Toura masts, still waiting on Venture masts 6+ months later. Please be careful and don't break masts!
• We have tentatively approved a project to build racks for lasers and acquire a couple more. Stay tuned
• We are starting to think about what's next for our JY fleet. If you have any ideas you'd like us to consider- let us know.
• Something new and exciting- we have formalized symmetrical spinnakers for juniors. You must have a signoff to use it. Find a senior who is signed off to give you the rundown and signoff or wait for a clinic announcement.
• Inspect your boats: Spreader tips, ring dings.

• Second Vice Report

Sofi and Ted

Some of 2023 highlights:

1-We raced on novice gear in tandem configuration and  did  3 Sherman island trips led by

2-Christine Page who is our new senior windsurfer.

3-Three Excomm approved senior projects  with one already completed  and two in progress.

4- We spent ~97% of our windsurfing budget replacing junior boards, updating the foiling fleet, getting high performance sails and senior boards.

5-We made preorders for next season’s novice equipment, j+ boards and accessories.

6-We held a big cleanup/maintenance day lasting 5 hours, 25 people volunteered, great turnout and lots of work was done.

7-Our current equipment is in good shape and ready for action.

Third Vice Report

• Ryan
• We did a keelboat cleaning pizza party this year which went really well and was direly needed.  We'll try to do another next summer.
• Winch cleaning clinic coming up in the next couple months.  Good way to learn about a critical part of keelboats, and get volunteer hours just hanging out in the sun in the cockpit.
• Sea Horse is down for a broken boom, have one on order, waiting to see if it ever ships.  Remember to always be aware of your lee shore and know that anything can break at any time, so make sure you'll have time to act when it does.

Rear Commodores

John (Sailing Instruction)

We are in the low and slow season (light wind and lower student demand).

Comparing the last 3 months of instruction to both last year and 2019 (pre-COVID), here's what I see.

On the dinghy side, we're teaching more students overall, slightly less on Saturdays and somewhat more on weekdays than in 2019. People are getting Novice ratings, as the wind doesn't favor Junior testing this time of year. And I am encouraged to see new Novices going out and teaching others, helping the club and continuing to learn themselves. I think newly rated members are in a better position in some ways than very experienced instructors, as they know what it's like to start out as a student.

An exciting new thing on the dinghy side is that we now have two Quests rigged with symmetric spinnakers, as are 5 of our 6 keelboats. This is a complicated sail and much easier to learn on a smaller boat. Juniors with a signoff are allowed to use the symmetric spinnaker. We have had one workshop on it so far and will be offering others. The off season is perfect for playing around with it.

For keelboats, we are continuing to improve satisfying student demand, but we're still not up to pre-COVID levels. Thanks to new Seniors teaching and longer term members returning to teaching, we are turning away much fewer students than last year.

Looking at ratings earned in the last 3 months, the number of new Novices is about the same as last year and 2019. Juniors are close to the 2019 level but significantly lower than last year. And there were no new Senior or Cruise ratings. This suggests a couple of areas to focus on, and I'll be asking for help in these.

Next year’s Senior Study Group planning is in progress, with Erik Latrope coordinating. He has just started organizing this, and it will start in February. We have an overall Fast Track coordinator for next year, Lucian Beebe, who will be working with Mike Jones on the program. Mike has been overall coordinator for the last two years.

I am thinking through next year's programs and would very much like some help here. I'm looking for instructors who are willing to sit down with me and figure out how to make our program even better next year. Contact me if you're willing to help.

I also want to get more Senior Sailors in the Club, not by changing the requirements, but by making the path clearer and removing obstacles to candidates' progression. To that end, if you are a Senior candidate and are having difficulties of any type, please talk to me about it.

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

Randi (Windsurfing instruction)

Since windsurfing is seasonal, this is more of an annual review than focused on Q4. We incorporated a number of changes this season:

• We vastly improved the % of incoming Novice I students who have passed the Novice Written Test—thanks to John’s event registration system development, this is now extremely reliable and will allow us to focus more tightly on beginner windsurfing skills during next seasons’ classes. 
• Worked to increase consistency of Novice instruction via instructor courses and specified skill progressions.
• We experimented with a three-class Novice sequence
• Experimented with Novice class start times to reduce impact of low tides
• Experimented with land lessons
• Scheduled and staffed intermediate level classes
• Developed some quantitative tracking metrics to help guide us in making effective program changes. This is in addition to the short student experience survey that is sent to every member who receives the Novice Rating

Overall, we taught 130 classes this year. We had 909 students who registered for classes this past year, which is probably about 50% more than last year. BIG thanks to the 58 volunteer instructors who contributed roughly 600 volunteer hours to teaching! 

Overall, despite the continued cap of 12 students for Novice classes, we had 346 new Novices this year, the most we’ve had since the start of online white card data, and 16% more than last year. This likely stems from the fact that this year we offered 45 Novice I classes, 9 more classes than in 2022.

We had 13% fewer new Juniors this season (59) than last (68) and we are reviewing that data to evaluate our plans for next season. We had 45% more J+ ratings this season (16), with long-time Juniors getting skilled up and flying on better gear! 

My goals for next season is to work with John to see what we can automate in order to reduce administrative overhead, as well as build out chair positions to make the program sustainable when I’m not available to send emails every Friday and Saturday night!!

Port Captain

David E on behalf of Birk and Audrey (on leave).

• Low wind days and closures are an opportunity to train and revisit operating procedures.
• Audrey is on leave but screening candidates remotely and generally being awesome as she can’t help it.
• Recruiting is going well - training the next batch of DL.
• VDL program is getting revamped - not so many requests for VDL but stay tuned for more info
• Lots of closures in December due to unfavorable tide conditions -> look at the website before heading down. Club will stay closed if there is less than 1 hour of water.

Secretary

No report for this GMM

Treasurer Report

Treasure 100723.pdf

Wrap Up

Who won the dessert contest?