May 19 2024 GMM

Agenda

1. Fee Increase Proposal & Vote

Proposal

Original PROPOSAL

Starting January 1st, 2025 

Starting January 1st, 2027 

Amendment

Include reduced family rates, which would be $645 for family rate for one year on 01/1/25 and $780 for one year on 01/01/27 (same 25% discount as we do for individual membership).

Voting Results

Quorum: 810 active members on Saturday when the list was printed + 4 on the spot renewal = 814 @ 10% is 81.4. Quorum required 82 eligible voters, we signed in 99.  Quorum satisfied.

Vote: Total eligible votes were 95 yes’s, 4 no’s, no abstentions.  The ballot passed!

Note: 2 windsurfing locker renters voted but later determined to not be eligible, so excluded for purposes of vote and quorum (their ballots were marked as provisional and were yeses; they were excluded from the original total of 97 yeses)

Adopted Proposal

Starting January 1st, 2025 

Starting January 1st, 2027 

2. Reports from Officers

1. Commodore: Mariya Ryazantseva

• our campaign to secure our Berths at J-Dock continues. Club members have been working hard on this issue, going to Commission meetings, working with City officials, the press. Big thanks to Camille, Sara, Shreyas, Robert. The club was featured in Latitude 38 (thanks to Heather for lobbying there), on KCBS radio and a reporter is looking to write an article in Berkeleyside. There is a draft resolution done by Terry Taplin working its way through the City's Parks, Recs & Waterfront Commission and City Council in June. We will need volunteers to show up at those to advocate for the club. We also need to write letters and "help" others write letters to the City Council in support of the club. Personal letters work best (vs the same one copied and pasted). We will be sending out an email/message on slack with a "toolkit" to help with this.
• Waterfront has put on pause their plan to move our boats but they are very clear that it will eventually happen if we don't do anything to protect those Berths.
• They want to put two 40' boats instead of 7 slips (our 5 Berths + 2). This would actually decrease the value of the location. Two 40' would bring about $12k a year to the marina fund. The marina gets exponentially more value from our keelboats being at this location.
• In other news, we've connected with the waterfront office about potential dredging of the South Sailing Basin. They have money allocated to do a study but no money to actually do it. Uncertainty around whether it will actually happen or not, it is being looked at.
• We will be discussing with the waterfront office the paving of the dirt parking lot and potential extension of our yard in June.

Vice Commodore: Isha Mishra

• In 2024, so far we have given 450 rides to the community from open houses.
• Upcoming open house dates are:
  •  Sunday June 23 coincides with the Sailstice
  •  Sunday July 21
  •  Sunday August 25
  •  Sunday September 22
  •  Sunday October 20

First Vice Commodore (Dinghies): James Clarkson, Memo Gunay

• Thank you to everyone who volunteers their time to keep our dinghy fleet in good working order.
• The JY15 is going to be a Junior boat, we're struggling with damage to this fleet, so raising the skill bar to sail them will hopefully help us in this regard.
• We have purchased covers for the 500's and the 800. If you sail these boats, please make sure to put the cover back on after use. 
• If you have ever broken a carbon tiller extension, please let us know. We are trying to gauge how well they last with our usage pattern

Second Vice Commodore (Windsurfing): Sofien Sehiri, Adam Rinder, Ted DeBonis

• Update sign-out procedures:
  • Adding drop-down for inventory to ensure people enter gear ID accurately
  • Helps identify boards / sails in services
  • Easily identify damaged equipment / add to repair log
• Board repair needs:
  • Join a clinic, learn how to do repairs
  • Earn volunteer hours doing board repairs: minor repair (2 hours/1 quarter) and major repair (4 hours / 2 quarters)
• Recent volunteer events:
  • Spring Clean & Season Prep (April 7): 24 people attended!
  • Rigged new sails, retired old sails, replaced foot straps, rigged new duotone booms (added adjustable harness lines)
  • Color coded boom rack, added new J / J+ boards into service

Third Vice Commodore (Keelboats):  Ryan Alder, Shreyas Chand

• Uncle Donald is out of the water with a broken rudder shaft, should be back soon with a stronger-than-ever rudder and new bottom paint.  Reminder that this is why we practice rudderless.
• Running rigging clinic in 2 weeks to replace all the haylards, sheets, and control lines on all 3 Commanders.  Need as much help as we can get running new line and whipping all the ends.
• Fighting back on J-Dock issue
  • Our campaign to secure our Berths at J-Dock continues. Waterfront has put on pause their plan to move our boats but they are very clear that it will eventually happen if we don't do anything to protect those Berths.
  • Club members have been working hard on this issue, going to Commission meetings, working with City officials, the press. Big thanks to Camille, Robert, Nicho, and Sara for leading this effort.
  • The club was featured in Latitude 38, on KCBS radio and a reporter is looking to write an article in Berkeleyside.
  • There is a draft resolution done by Terry Taplin working its way through the City's Parks, Recs & Waterfront Commission and City Council in June. We will need volunteers to show up at those to advocate for the club.
  • We also plan to have a letter writing campaign to the City Council in support of the club. Personal letters work best and we'll be sending out an announcement for folks to participate in this, including a "toolkit" to help you write letters. 

Rear Commodore (Teaching): John Bongiovanni, Randi Shapiro

• Randi:
  • We started our beginner windsurfing instructional program on April 19. We have been impacted by some low tide cancellations but we've had the same number of Novice windsurfing students as the previous two years. We've been really well staffed so far, so particular thanks to our regular teachers. 
  • We have 61 new windsurfers this year already, with two new Juniors AND a whopping FOUR J+ windsurfers! Congrats to new J+ members Justin J., Ivan B, Alina S., and Jaewon K.!
  • If you haven't taught yet, starting out in the launch assistant role and listening in on the instruction is a great way to build confidence to try your hand as an assistant instructor. Juniors, it's OK if you don't feel like an expert windsurfer yet—remembering the initial struggle can actually help you articulate corrections, since the skills haven't yet become natural in your body.
  • We are currently running a WIPA Level II training clinic with seven students in it to increase our instruction level and will run two more WIPA sessions this fiscal year.
  • We also started our intermediate level instruction this weekend, so look forward to more clinics at to help folks get planing and water starting.
  • Finally, one big administrative accomplishment of this quarter has been John B.'s work moving our ad hoc volunteer management system into our CSC website, which is going to be super helpful moving forward this season. Thanks, John!
• John:
  • The season is ramping up well, but we are in a bad tide cycle until early June. We’ve had to do land lessons (only) every other Saturday, for example, and a number of weekday lessons have been cancelled because of times.
  • Comparing the last 3 months of instruction to both last year and 2019 (pre-COVID), here's what I see.  We had 11 fewer instruction days the last 3 months compared with the same period in 2019, that’s 32% fewer instruction days, but we are teaching 25% more students per instruction day. So despite the low tides, our dinghy instruction program is humming. And a number of new members are doing a lot of teaching.
  • Thanks to the efforts of a lot of people, our keelboat program is recovering well from the pandemic drop, and I think it will do really well this season.  Comparing the last 3 months with the same period in 2019, we are running about the same in lesson days and number of students, for this first time since 2019. This is an incredible achievement, due to a small number of dedicated keelboat instructors.
  • We held a keelboat instructor meeting a few weeks ago, and there is a lot of interest in teaching keelboats. A number of instructors have come back to the program after not teaching for a while, and we have some newer seniors also getting active. We are working on reviving the traditional Wednesday evening lessons. I believe we have enough instructors to do it, and we have a coordinator, Liang Chow, to work out the details and manage the process. We’re not quite there yet, maybe a month off, but watch for details. In the mean time, there will continue to be lessons on Wednesdays and at other times, with signup working the same as now. We will be offering more Intro to Keelboats and Level 1 tests to allow more students into the keelboat program.
  • Senior Study Group is winding down. We had another fantastic program, and the Senior written test was administered to the group this past week. 
  • The first Fast Track session was last week, and we have 4 more sessions scheduled. This is one of the best programs we have on the sailing side, and I encourage non-Juniors to attend it. It’s like a ski week when you’re learning to ski – 5 days of intense instruction, and you come out of it a much better sailor. If you are a Junior, I encourage you to come out and teach Fast Track, at least one day. You will be teaching at a more advanced level, you’ll learn a lot both as a sailor and as an instructor.
  • Advanced Dinghy started a few weeks ago, and we have a full program thanks to Anne Monk, the coordinator. Come out on Monday evenings (except Fast Track weeks and holidays), and learn advanced skills, like rudderless sailing.
  • As always, I will conclude by thanking all of the instructors who have kept our sailing program going at a very high level.

Port Captain report: Birk Huber

• We have the hiring of a long term replacement for on of our dayleaders who has graduated underway, but otherwise have reasonable summer coverage and are not looking for more paid DLS.
• That said we are trying to beef up staffing on weekends by adding VDL shifts on Saturday and Sunday.  VDLs will be expected to help dayleaders by covering the radio and front office and helping with rescues, but not necessarily to open/close or solo rescues. If you are interested and can commit to covering a shift a quarter, please contact the Port Captains.
• We ask for one shift per quarter in order to ensure that people remain up to date with office procedures and skiff practices – after Oct 1 2024 we consider any vdl rating signoffs to be invalid if they are more than a year old – we will re-sign people off as they work shifts.
• Our senior day leader David Elias is now a certified powerboat instructor and has been reevaluating how we train people to use the skiffs. Toward this end we will be resetting all skiff basic skills ratings on Oct 1 2024 – current ratings will remain valid until then, but at that time we will clear all ratings from before Jan 1 2024.  To request training/evaluation on skiff usage please get in touch with the port captains and let them know why you need it.
• The radios in the cabinet by the desk(and on the desk) are for day leader use. Please don’t borrow them without coordinating with a day leader. We do hope to set up a collection of loaner radios in the bubby by the printer, but until then don’t borrow a radio without checking with the day leader.
• The club house is also our day leaders office, you are totally welcome to use it but please defer to dayleader requests as they may need space to do their jobs. If you are planning on making improvements please coordinate with the Port Captains.

Secretary: no report, not present

Treasurer: not present, report provided below

Annual Statement of Financial Condition May 1 2024

As of May 1st Cal Sailing Club had $36,524 in its bank accounts, and its property was worth $399,296 (depreciated book value). The club also has $11,076 in a savings bond and expects DBW* to reimburse us for items that we’ve already paid for.  Bank balance was down $34,570 from 5/1/23, property was down $23,127. This statement was prepared without audit from the club’s books. 

Income and spending follows.  Regular dues income was higher than any previous year, while weather scored below the average of the most recent 6 years.

*DBW is the State of California Parks and Recreation Department, Division of Boating and Waterways, which funds equipment and instructor training for teaching safe boating and windsurfing.

Budget for Next Fiscal Year

Excomm adopted the following budget for the 5/1/2024 – 4/30/2025 fiscal year.  This budget does not include the proposed dues increase, and continues the deficit due to spending exceeding income.  If the dues increase passes, the club will maintain a healthy bank balance.

Big thanks to everyone who worked hard for the club, and to all the generous members who donated and renewed during the plagues!