Start Time  6:10 pm

End Time 6:50

Location: Virtual

Attendance

Officer’s Reports

Commodore(Mary, Nico)

• Thank you to all the volunteers that have been working on many projects over the end of the year / winter.
• Grant request results.  We were able to get most of the amount requested from DBW - thank you to Eric Lee, Min, Peter and Carolyn for the grant writing and submission.
• In particular, I would like to give a shout out to Camille (Antinori) who has stepped up to be Marina Planning Chair and has given her time to attend the various meetings organized by the City  and marina, with a few other CSC members, and has been reporting back to the club. 
• High level overview of the club after one year of pandemic:
  • At the beginning of the pandemic, things were quite scary financially for the club, but the good news is that after one year, we are in good shape, thanks to all the donations from the members, and the efforts from club members to reopen the club
  • We’ve had an uptick of new members joining the club, and starting in Oct/November, it was even higher than previous year.
  • Many new members have bought annual memberships
  • The budget is in good shape.
• Covid protocols: thank you for following the rules, keep it up. The numbers are trending in the right direction for the bay. With the roll-out of the vaccines, one can finally feel optimistic. The Reopening Planning committee is monitoring the latest news and we are considering some updates to the protocols to increase capacity as we are getting in the windy months.
• Call out about Min’s 360 cool open house video on the website homepage and youtube channel.

Vice Commodore (Christina/Min)

• min created and posted video on virtual open house and on you tube (thanks!).
• The Social committee is kind of restricted on activities, but has been organizing game nights. They are also planning some virtual new member parties. Watch for announcements.

First vice (memo, james)

• The fleet is in good shape.
• There is a new Jy ordered and we are waiting on quest rudders.
• Please keep dinghy log up to date and fix stuff.

Port Captains: (Heather, Adelaide absent, Nicho presenting)

We are excited to have a spring DL team in place. PCs are *very* grateful for the vdls who continue to help us covering shifts as we work with the strange hiring conditions due to Covid19. We encourage anyone who is interested in getting some good volunteer hours to reach out to PCs for VDL training. We need help covering full shifts and backup support for new DL staff.

Treasurer’s Report

Second Vice: (sofien and adam)

• They are working to get equipment ready for the season.
  • Sail storage closet has been built, and sails tagged and stored.
  • Volunteers are helping out.
  • This requires more repair/refurbish than purchasing.

Third Vice: (Ryan absent, Sofien presenting)

• Keelboat usage continues to be light.  Fleet is doing well.   With the slow easing of restrictions we're going to resume some of the work that requires more people, like getting Meritorious's mast back up with new standing rigging.
• I am excited to bring Andy Hackett in as co-3rd.  The 3rd vice position isn't high effort, thanks to Sheldon, our sail maintenance chair, and Greg, who is a keelboat fixing machine.  But it has been occasionally overwhelming being solely responsible for the keelboat fleet, so it'll be nice having someone to share in decisions and help keep an eye on things.  Andy and I have worked together a lot during the Friday dinghy repair clinics and he was crucial in getting the dinghy log to all green, so I'm looking forward to having him join excomm.

Rear Commodore (John - Sailing):

We are continuing most of our programs under the current restrictions with the exception of keelboats.

Basic/Intermediate Dinghy Lessons

• Every Saturday morning, one student per dinghy, instructor in another boat.
• Birk has done a fantastic job organizing this, and we’re getting into shape for the windy season, understanding how best to use the skiff, having an extra person on the dock, how to deal with low tides and odd winds, and rescues
• We are way oversubscribed with students, and we’re maintaining a wait list for these lessons. We’ve expanded capacity to 9 students each Saturday using a mix of Quests and JYs. We’re encouraging members to take advantage of other opportunities

Lessons on  Demand

• A number of instructors are participating, and students are taking advantage of it. We can’t track the numbers easily

Junior Coaching Sessions

• These are informal sessions on Saturday afternoons. Students reserve boats and connect on the spot with instructors. This just started. The idea is to move more advanced students out of the morning sessions.

Weekday lessons

• Starting in March, we’ll have regular lessons Monday afternoons, coordinated by Mark Elgood. This will relieve somewhat the Saturday demand for those whose schedules match it.

Zoom Sessions

• Weekly Wednesday sessions instead of Senior Study Group. We try to alternate between Junior and Senior topics, and the sessions are open to all members. The March 10 session will be a Dinghy Instructor Workshop
• David Frasier and Ben Lee’s Knots sessions on Thursdays

Videos

• Min Lee is producing and directing a basic Capsize Recovery video (quick introduction for beginners to supplement Camille Antinori’s great 3-part videos) and one on Anchoring

Keelboat program

• Dead in the water pending relaxed distancing restrictions

Member Advancement

• Based on Dan Z’s suggestion, we have a self-assessment system for Dinghy Rigging, Dinghy Novice Practical, and Dinghy Junior Practical that feeds into a testers’ bulletin board. This has made the test process much more transparent both in terms of the test requirements and how to get a test
• Since last GMM (November), 32 members have earned Novice and one has earned Junior. In the same period the prior year, only 10 members earned Novice and 4 earned Junior. So despite the restrictions, we are helping members advance at a good rate. Junior rating is hard this time of year because of light winds

My Focus

• Lessons for newer members in a fair, predictable way as long as we have to live under the distancing restrictions
• As the restrictions relax, develop procedures to increase our teaching capacity in a safe manner
• Junior Fast Tracks
• Advanced Dinghy Sessions
• Keelboat Instruction
• Realistically, it will be hard to make Senior this year. But a number of people have been working on it for some time, and we’ll work with them. We’ll also help the members who started last year on this path to pick up and get going again. 

Thanks 

To everyone who’s been helping getting us through this, keeping our teaching programs going. By instructing, coordinating, doing Zoom sessions, producing videos, writing blogs, all of that. We have a lot of new members learning sailing, and they appreciate this.

Rear Commodore (Erick - Windsurfing):

Not too much done since last meeting wrt teaching. As the seasons starts our hope is to maintain our novice lessons while increasing lessons and workshops aimed at intermediate/advanced. Ultimately we would  like it to be possible to advance from novice to j+ in a season. We also hoep to set up more field trips -- watch for announcements.

Peter Baczeck: query -- at what level (color) can we have people on the same boat. California public health does publish guidelines, but they don’t include sailing. Nicho: They are in the process of clarifying what will happen when we go to red tier.  -- will probably happen sooner than dinghies. No guidance yet, still working to get clarity.

Comments/Questions from members:

Paul asked about changes to protocols for the vaccinated: Nicho’s answer we follow protocols coming from the city of berkeley.  And those don’t change for the vaccinated.

Followup from someone else: can two people with their shots be on same boats. Nicho’s answer -- depends on our tier. Not seeing any guidance from state yet. So answer not really.

Robert put in a link to a questionnaire https://www.cityofberkeley.info/BMASP/ about marina future and suggests people participate in it to make sure our voices are heard.