Feb 23 2020 GMM Minutes

Meeting Date: February 23, 2020

Start Time: 5:30 pm

End Time: 5:50 pm

Location: CSC yard

ATTENDANCE

Officer’s Reports

Commodore (Mary) - out big news is the Bay Trail construction project. It should be done sometime in April. They plan to do the work with the least interruptions to club activities. Dinghy lessons will be managed day-to-day. We have a Google Group to help instructors and students with the latest information and changes to regularly scheduled Monday and Thursday lessons. Saturday lessons will continue unchanged. We will have to be closed for one M-F while the pavement cures. Excomm had an officers retreat a few weeks ago to discuss plans for the coming year and one of my goals is to meet with each of the Chairs and discuss resources and focus on how I can support everyone. 

Vice Commodore (Christina, Lonnie, Min, Tone) - we want to thank Joanie Pacheco for cooking tonight. Our first Open house is coming up March 15. We are still looking for a banquet chair and/or volunteers to do one or more Open house lunch or dinner. We need cooks all summer long, to cook for Open house, Fast track, and parties. We are going to start a GoFundMe to offset the cost of the parties. 

1st Vice (James, Memo) - the dinghy fleet is doing well thanks to Ryan, Memo, and Andy. All of our boats are “green”. We are planning to add two or three factory-new JYs to our fleet this year and retire the most worn hulls. We have new Quest mainsails, currently there is one on Q5.

2nd Vice (Sofien) - we got four new novice boards that are short and wide, super stable and perfect for beginners. We have new toys for J+ that are 130-86 liter and foiling. Junior boards are being re-decked and getting new foot straps. We are starting on-demand lesson sign-up on the webpage, similar to the on-demand dinghy lessons. We are testing a new device from SurfBent that will protect board noses in crashes, and we have new universals. On April 4, this season’s kids lessons will start. On March 27 we are having a party with a DJ. Quentin Nicholes will be redesigning board storage and rewriting the J test for his senior project. We are planning Cal Cup races in the South Basin and are looking into adding windsurfers to the Treasure Island dinghy cruise on May 3. Thank you to everyone who helps with the windsurf programs. 

3rd Vice (Ryan) - not a lot going on with the keelboat fleet. Meritorious is DNS with a broken shroud. The rest of the boats are fine since Greg and Sheldon just repaired the bilge hose in Dr. Who. 

Rear Commodore Sailing (John) - I'm a numbers guy, and my report is usually a lot of statistics on number of students, lessons, ratings, etc. comparing this year to last year. I track this stuff because I think it is a good indicator of how our programs are working, and it has highlighted problem areas for us to address. I'll spare you the numbers, talk about how our instruction programs are working or not, and look to the future.

We're in the slow season, where membership is less than half of the summer peak and everything slows down accordingly. In addition, we 're dealing with the Bay Trail construction, which is impacting weekday lessons.

Let's talk about that for a minute. That's just started, so we don't know its effect yet. On the positive side, the contractor is working with us to keep our access to the hoists available as much as possible, and they're knocking off work at 2pm. I am managing dinghy lessons on a day by day basis with Brenden's help to keep dinghy lessons going throughout the construction to the extent possible. Tone To has been a great communication channel with the contractor. We have to contend not only with the construction but with low tides, so every lesson day is different.  Some lessons will be normal, some will start late (2pm), and some will be run out of J-Dock. I've set up a Google Group for dinghy instructors and students to coordinate this. If you are either, you should be on this group. See me for details.

For my slow season numbers analysis, I looked at data from Dec 1 to the end of Feb for last year and this year. This is what I found:

• We are teaching more dinghy lessons this year than last, especially on Saturdays
• Mondays are like last year, Thursdays are down significantly
• We are teaching a lot more keelboat lessons than last year, mainly outside of Wednesday lessons. Demand for Wednesday lessons remains somewhat low. I don't understand this, although it is a continuing trend. OTOH more advanced and individual lessons are stronger than in the past.
• We are in a season where advanced ratings are hard to get, so there's no real data

Looking forward (and a little backward), we have a lot of exciting things coming up:

• Dinghy Instructor Workshop – one session completed and one to be held next week. We've done this in the past on a small scale, but we've scaled it up (successfully) this year with about 15 students and 7 instructors.
• Advanced Sailing Workshops – James and Saul are the leaders here, and we're working on a pyramid training system to get those who are interested to a more advanced level.  Focus will be on both dinghies and keelboats. Embody the "sail with someone better than you" principle. 
• Senior Study Group in progress – revamp of curriculum
• Advanced Dinghy
• Fast Track – need co-coordinators
• Women's Clinics
• Other Workshops – come up with ideas and do them. I'm here to help. Memo's workshop is a good example. I'll be doing Single Handing and Between the Docks

I'll end by thanking all of you who have given your time as instructors. We live or die as a Club based on our sailing instruction, and we owe our success to you.

Rear Commodore Windsurfing (JJ) - Regular novice lessons for members will begin at the start of April, Sat & Sun 10:30 (note the change in the start time for Sunday from 11-10:30).  Instructor/helper lesson sign ups will go out via the windsurfing google groups the week before lessons start. Please consider helping out and getting your work hours for the upcoming quarter! Announcement:  The talented Will Spargur and teaching guru will be leading a couple of new instructor training workshops at the end of March/start of April geared to Junior and J+s. The workshop will cover: Basic Class Structure for Novice lessons, Hands-on mock teaching, Utilizing Class Helpers & Managing Large Classes. Look for the official announcements on the workshops soon.  In other teaching news: Sofien Sehiri is running the kids windsurfing lessons on Sat/Sun beginning in April. Start time is 9:30. Please contact him for more info. 

Port Captains (Brenden & Kevin) - use John B’s Google Group if you are planning to teach or take a lesson. Kevin is going to build up the VDL team. We changed the white cards to have two levels of VDL training. At the first level you can drive the motorboat, drop racing buoys, and other non-rescue tasks. At the second level you can fill in for the DL and perform rescues. We will start training when windsurf lesson start in April. Many of our Paid DLs are graduating so we need help doing outreach. It would be great to set up a table for Cal Day on April 18, if anyone has experience with that please contact us.

Trash Chair (Dan) - We don’t have maids here. Pick up after yourself, don’t bring things and leave them here, and toss your beer cans when you are done drinking. I will throw out non-trash if it gets left around so remember to take your gear with you leave.

Treasurer (Peter) - 

Quarterly Statement of Financial Condition February 1 2020

As of February 1st we had $8,772 in the bank, down $9,773 from 11/1/19. Thanks to our generous members, many of whom signed up for their employers’ donation-matching and volunteer-support programs, we received over $5,000 in donations in the last three months. The spending below includes

$7,074 that will be reimbursed by the Division of Boating and Waterways under our 2019 grant. Big thanks to everyone who worked hard for the club!