August 14, 2022 GMM minutes

Start Time  6:10

End Time  6:30

Location: CSC Club House

Attendance

Reports 

Commodore:

Welcome to co-commodore Mariya Ryazantseva. She also serves as our social media coordinator and news letter editor and will be a good voice for the club.

Goodbye to Andy Hackett who is stepping down as co-third vice, He will be missed.

Welcome to Jack Chen who is stepping up as co-third vice!

We are also looking for someone to take on the position of Youth Ride Chair! Please contact us if you are interested.

Vice Commodores:

Over the last two open houses we have introduced over 280 people to sailing. While this is great you used to have much more attendance at open houses. We are still working on getting back into the swing of things so please come by for our next open house on 8/28 – we need help in all capacities.

The Girl scouts are coming 9/10,9/18 and 9/25 – we need volunteers of all types for this as well (skippers, land school teachers, food preparers, etc.).

1rst Vice:

We have three new boats coming – 2 rs touras and 1 rs 500.  There are new tiller carbon fiber extensions on several of the quests – we would like feedback – if there are no complaints we will fit all quests with the new tiller extensions. 

2nd Vice:

AR read highlights from the rear commodore for windsurfing report. Also we are making gear inspection an important part of ratings.  We will also be getting 2 more gecko boards and duo tone booms and other equipment.

3rd Vice: 

We still have six keelboats and all are sailable. Daisy just got a bottom job so all the commanders are have been attended to. We will be sending the Merits next.

Rear commodore:

Rear Commodore for Windsurfing: 

Thanks to everybody who has been stepping up to teach our Novice lessons! Making the sport accessible is a key function of this program, and we have introduced 83 new windsurfers to the sport since our last meeting (5/22), and have given Advanced Novice lessons to many beyond that.

Taking a cue from my sailing counterpart John Bongiovanni, I've looked at this against historical data to try to understand how this season is shaping up. Our numbers for June and July are in line with or higher than our pre-pandemic Novice ratings issued, but this June 2022 was well below last year's very successful June. (22 vs 51) Both years were impacted by low-tide cancellations, but this June we had four Novice classes vs. the previous year's five classes, which accounts for only some of the difference. I am curious about that and will probably investigate more thoroughly in the off season.

I expect our numbers for Novices minted will drop somewhat relative to previous years in that we've now removed language from our website about drop-in lessons, meaning we should be mostly reliant on the registration system in which classes are currently capped at 12. This is an effort to increase the quality of the experience for students who attend and volunteers who teach.

If this experiment is successful for students, I would expect to see an increase in the number of Novices sticking with the sport and becoming Juniors, but these numbers are low enough that it will take time to gather enough data to separate signal from noise. Year-to-date the numbers are similar to last year (28 vs 30). The number of new J+s has been relatively consistent across years.

This year has seen a precipitous drop in intermediate and more advanced sailing clinics relative to last year. One reason for that may be my focus on the Novice and Advanced Novice levels of development. Another is clear when I review who taught our clinics last year—almost exclusively, these were taught by club officers. The latter have had other duties to attend to this year, and I have not had the time to devote to staffing more advanced curriculum.

I would love to consider this an appeal to our many Senior windsurfing members to invest in the next generation of windsurfers and contact me to teach windsurfing skills you're especially fond of. Remember—you may not consider yourself an expert or a natural-born instructor, but we have so many people new to the sport who will absolutely benefit from your tips and mentorship!! And keeping new blood in the sport keeps it viable for the rest of us.

One project I mentioned last GMM is the development of a qualitative survey to send to Novices after their first lesson. Andreas N. (lead), Peter M., and I (Randi S.), met to establish what kinds of information we want to elicit, and Andreas is prototyping the survey. I'm excited to understand more about the experience our new windsurfers are having, and to use that information as a baseline to measure initiatives to increase the quality of our instruction, as well as the degree to which we are including everybody who is interested in the sport.

Finally, we have made a change to our windsurfing written tests at the recommendation of a member. In the past, if members failed a written test, the system did not report which questions you got wrong. Now, it does, meaning it serves as a study aid and assists with the learning process.

Thanks, all, hope you're enjoying the great wind we've been having at the club!

Rear Commodore for Sailing: 

As always, I look at our numbers compared to an earlier year (2019 in this case, pre-COVID, and

I'm looking at May 1 to August 15) to get an idea of how we're doing. But I also look around

during lessons and talk with instructors and testers.

Our dinghy program is going very well despite the low tides hitting at bad times and forcing us

to cancel or limit lessons. So although we've had half the lessons days on Saturdays during this

period compared to 3 years ago, we've taught just a third fewer students overall, and 25% more

per day.

On Mondays, we've taught the same number of students as in the same period 3 years ago, and

on Thursdays, we've taught 20% more.

We are almost always getting enough instructors, both on Saturdays and on weekdays.

Students have been arriving early on Saturdays (they are waiting when the Club opens at 9am

for 10am lessons), so we rare now encouraging instructors to arrive early to teach rigging, get

boats in the water, and get boats out on the water as soon as possible. It's all working very well.

Fast Tracks have been going strong, thanks to our coordinators and especially to Mike Jones,

who is managing the overall program this year. We've seen some fantastic innovations, which

we will incorporate into future Fast Tracks. And can you believe that we're already planning for

the 2023 season, with some coordinators already lined up?

We're had a great Advanced Dinghy program, coordinated by Nicole Faghihi. We have a couple

of more sessions, ending with a bang (figuratively, I hope) with James Clarkson doing gennaker.

I have been impressed by the skill and energy I've seen in the Advanced Dinghy students, and

I'm seeing some promising Senior candidates in the group.

The one area where we need focus is the Junior rating. The number of ratings earned is down

compared to 2019, and the test pass rate is down. We're working to make sure we prepare

members better for this skills they need to get the rating.

The keelboat instructor program is mixed. Again I'm comparing May 1 through now for this year

against the same period in 2019, but also getting feedback from instructors and students.

The good news is that the total number of students taught is up 30% over 2019, and the bad

news is that all of this increase is in impromptu and advanced lessons and not in our announced

basic lessons. Our basic lessons are about equal to what they were in 2019, but we're turning

away almost as many people as we teach. The problem is that we don't have very many

instructors willing to teach these lessons, and there's no easy fix for that. Thanks to Nelz

Carpentier and Elyakim Renat for keeping this program going. We may improve in the near

future with a combination of recent keelboat seniors and old time seniors becoming more

active again.

I'll conclude by thanking all of you who have contributed to our sailing insruction program as

instructions, Fast Track coordinators, land school instructors, and testers. It's especially

gratifying to see newly minted Juniors teaching – keep it up. We're doing so well now thanks to

your efforts.

Port Captains 

Expect new faces going into fall. We will be saying goodbye to many of our more experienced dayleaders and hello to new people. We have 3 new hires that will be starting shadow shifts. Keep making friends with your dayleaders, they do have your back!

Secretary

No updates.

Treasurer: