Commodore Report

Huge thank you to Isha, Berkeley Yacht Club, chefs and the volunteers for making this holiday GMM such a success! 

Thank you to Nicho, Camille, Robert, Sara, Shreyas and many more for the huge success in maintaining CSC berths at J-dock in Berkeley Marina.  There was wide support on the Council, thanks to probably more than a hundred of personal letters that were sent by members and supporters. We were also able to take many of them out for a sail, and some of them are very tempted to start taking lessons. Many club members showed in person and online yesterday (and at many other meetings). There is a recording online.  

It was also really nice to raise awareness about community sailing, and the fact that anyone can get on the water through this community and learn to sail.

Thank you to our racing chairs! Racing this year has been a great success! 

Vice Commodore Report

We're excited to share some highlights from our Open House events this year:

• We held 7 Open Houses from April to October, which is just one less than last year.

• Total rides reached 1,586—our highest turnout since 2019!

• Adult rides: 1,247, also the highest since 2019.

• Child rides: 339.

• For the first time, we had two Open Houses exceeding 300 attendees (in April and August).

Other Highlights

• We’ve made ongoing improvements to our kitchen operations to ensure our volunteers stay well fed.

• On average, we had over 50 volunteers at each Open House. Volunteer efforts made these events run smoothly, and we truly appreciate the dedication of everyone involved.

Thank you to everyone for making this season a success!

First Vice

James is stepping down from excom after 8 years and Robert Spark is joining the first vice team in his place. Thank you James!

As you may now, we can no longer purchase JY15s, so we have been testing boats to start planning for an eventual replacement. Please give us a holler if you have any thoughts

Fleet is in good shape, thank you to all the volunteers for keeping up with repairs.

Lets be gentle with masts, it took us 8 months to get replacements but they're finally stateside so we're relatively well stocked.

As always, let us know if you have any questions, concerns or thoughts

Second Vice

First of all our windsurfing equipment is in good standing and ready for a new season.

Adam Rinder stepped down from Co-Second Vice position. Thanks Adam for everything you did to keep the fleet in good shape.

Created 2 new chair positions 

Youth windsurfing lessons coordinator and sherman island trips coordinator.

7 senior projects have been completed and 3 new inaugurated seniors: Anton Serputko, Burhan Altunel and Ivan Bankov 

Spent $15k of our budget then we had a budget freeze hopefully temporary.

New novice sails brand (S2 Dragon) to support our school program after the close down of Sailworks.

We did a few work parties which had a great turnout. We wanted to thank all our volunteers, we won’t be able to do all that work without you.

Third Vice

The Winch clinic went well, thanks to everyone who came out, we had a great turnout!
4 boats are due for a bottom job at the same time, so they’re going to be going in back to back.  There will be one boat or another missing from J dock for a while.
Doctor Who is DNS’d for new standing rigging.  We have the new rigging on hand and will be scheduling a time to step the mast soon.
We are trying to get more people involved in keelboat maintenance, so keep an eye out in the #keelboats channel on Slack.  When something comes up that needs done, we’ll post in there to see if anyone can help/handle it.

Port Captain

• We have coverage scheduled through  the beginning of January, and will be working on the Spring schedule in the next few weeks.

• We are back in a period of problematic tides for the next few months, please check the resources: Open/Close times section on the website or the club status page before heading down.

• While winter weekends are generally not as hectic as Spring/Summer/Fall weekends, they are a good time to consider learning the ropes of club operations while assisting our day leaders. If you are interested in being a DL assistant please reach out to the port captains, and if you are already a DL assistant please remember to grab weekend mid-day shifts to stay sharp while we wait for things to pick back up.

Treasurer Report

Quarterly Statement of Financial Condition November 1 2024

As of this date we had $41,436 in the bank accounts, down $1,065 from 8/1/24. We also expected reimbursement of about $4,000 from the Division of Boating and Waterways (DBW) under our current grant for items we’ve already paid for. Regular membership dues for the quarter were 12% lower than the average of dues in the same quarter of the previous three years. 

Big thanks to everyone who worked hard for the club! 

Rear Commodore for Sailing Report

CSC GMM November 14, 2024

I’m a numbers guy, and I look at our instruction programs through that lens. The pandemic was

a big event, so I look at how we’re doing now compared to pre-pandemic, same period in 2019.

So this time it’s the last 3 months compared to the same period in 2019.

On the dinghy side we’re teaching about the same number of students on Saturdays, but,

contiinuing a trend for the past while, we’re teaching a lot more students on weekdays. I don’t

know why, but we have a lot of students on Mondays now. The great news is that we also have

a lot of instructors showing up. Thanks to you for that. And remember that you can log double

hours for teaching dinghy on weekdays.

We are working on Teach Along sessions to help develop instructors. The idea is that you go out

with three people in a boat to practice teach a specific skill, like COB. One is a very experienced

instructor, one is a relatively recent Junior who wants to learn to teach it, and the third is a

novice student who wants to learn it. We did this to prepare for the Women’s Fast Track last

summer, and we found it to be a very powerful approach. We are trying to figure out how to do

it on a regular basis.

Speaking of Fast Track, there will be an All Women’s Fast Track next year. It worked really well.

On the keelboat side, Wednesday night lessons are working well, thanks primarily to Liang

Chow, who has been coordinating them, and also, of course, to the instructors who have been

teaching them. We are now satisfying 90% of the demand for these lessons, which means 90%

of the lessons signups actually get a lesson, as opposed to fewer than 50% a couple of years

ago.

We had a great year for Seniors. 5 members earned the Senior Dinghy rating and one earned

the full Senior rating (dinghy and keelboat). I’ll note that this year’s class was the most diverse

we’ve seen, including two women, one an 18 year old Czeck.

I do want to talk about Senior. It’s a difficult rating and a great accomplishment when you get it.

There is an aura about it which discourages some members from going for it. If you want to get

it, I suggest reaching out to senior members you know to mentor you, on and off the water. I

and others are available for this.

We have a Cruise Study Group finishing next week, organized by Cesare Garlati, to help

members pass the rigorous written test for that rating and in general to be able to plan cruises

in the bay. A Senior Study Group will start in February to teach the knowledge required for the

Senior Rating. Joel Beazer is the coordinator, and he is way ahead of the game in planning it.

As always, I will conclude by thanking all of the instructors who have kept our sailing program

going at a very high level.

Rear Commodore for Windsurfing Report

This season:

• We continued the work we were doing over the past two seasons to increase consistency of Novice instruction via instructor courses and specified class progressions, including the three-class Novice sequence 

• We scheduled testing sessions to make sailing tests feel more accessible—thanks to Cindoll for doing that testing this year.

• Scheduled and staffed intermediate level classes

• John developed some great tools to allow us to manage instructor staffing through the event system as well as to send out automated messages to students and instructors, which helps streamline organization significantly. Very excited to have that for next season.

• We formalized two new chair positions: the Field Trip Coordinator, which Christine Page ably handled, and the Youth Windsurfing Chair, co-chaired this season by Julien Traisnel and James Peroulas. They did awesome and it is great to have that in action. We need to revive our women's windsurfing program next season, let me know if you're interested in pitching in there. 

2024: Offered 132 classes this year, with about 800 students. That represents about 800 volunteer hours—thanks to each and every member who contributed their time and expertise in teaching. And thanks to everybody who helped pitch in when I was out, Steven Lee in particular.

Overall, we saw less demand this year for our classes, Novice I classes in particular, with 297 new Novices joining the sport, down 14% from last year but on par with previous years. Unclear if last year was a blip of some kind or if we were impacted by general trends this year (increase in summer travel or the like). We offered fewer Novice I classes (40) as demand was lower and we only had a few oversubscribed classes at that level.

We continued to invest in intermediate classes and saw a bump in members who earned their Junior and J+ ratings, with some long-time Novice members returning to windsurfing and earning their Junior rating! These ratings were up 17/18% over last year but these trends are pretty lumpy and not that meaningful to track. Offering intermediate classes help, but I suspect that social encouragement of Seniors and more established club members has a big impact on folks pursuing intermediate ratings, so keep doing all you do to help our less experienced windsurfers out and keep encouraging them to take on the next rating!

Secretary Report

No report.