Start Time  6:34

End Time  6:56

Location: Berkeley Yacht Club

Attendance

Reports 

Commodore:

It has been an amazing year with many new members. 

We have submitted a new DBW grant submission (thanks Sarah), and thanks to the many volunteers who help make everything work and especially the cooks tonight!

Vice Commodores:

We started up open houses again in June for the first time since COVID lockdown. We gave 912 rides this year (744 adults, 208 kids). There were 4 capsizes – and we would like to get that down to zero. The last open house will be next sunday, please come! Dennis is now one of our new open house coordinators – thanks Dennis for stepping up.

Thanks to the banquet chairs for keeping us fed (both at open houses and at GMMs).

We are looking for a youth rides chair please reach out to excomm if you are interested.

1st Vice:

Since August we have 3 new boats – 2 RS Touras and 1 RS 500.  We are planning to replace the tiller extensions on all of our boats with a standard length carbon extension and would like feedback on that and on other fleet additions. Please repair more boats! If you don’t know how, ask, and use the dinghy log. You can reach us quickly on Slack or via email at <firstvice@cal-sailing.org>;

2nd Vice:

We purchased a lot of new equipment: 11 Junior and 4 novice boards, 37 carbon masts, 18 booms, 20 harnesses and 20 new sails (all at discounted prices). We are set for next year, but we do need volunteers to tag the new gear and get it ready for next year. We also need volunteers to help regift the old geer.

3rd Vice: 

We are working to get the fleet back in good condition. Andy departed and Jack Chen is joining as a new co-3rt Vice. We will be calling for help in cleaning boats. The next big project is replacing the rigging on Uncle Donald.

Rear commodore:

Rear Commodore for Windsurfing: 

We taught 118 classes this year; unlike the sailors we are limited to the windy season so are done aside from some repair lessons. Thanks to the 60 volunteer instructors who contributed more than 560 hours to running this season’s instructional programs! We probably ended up teaching close to 600 students, all told.

Other highlights from the year:

• We brought back Advanced Novice Classes.
• We added an equipment inspection class as a requirement for a junior rating. 
  • The reason for this was to address an increase in board damage we noticed with the opening of the new dock, but an important benefit has been to help new windsurfers feel more connected and confident, and the number of Junior ratings earned increased significantly with the introduction of these classes.

Overall, we were very close to last year’s high water mark for Novices minted in our classes, with 300 new Novice ratings earned in 2022 (309 in 2021, and ~180 in our pre-COVID19 years 2018 and 2019). We had more members go on to earn Junior ratings this year (70) than last year (54), matching the previous high mark of 68 in 2019. Our J+ ratings earned (11) was comparable to past years.

We are working to bring more clarity and accessibility to the rating program in the off-season and will try to have more intermediate classes next year to help members progress in their windsurfing careers.

Rear Commodore for Sailing: 

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

I&#39;m looking at May 1 to October 31) to get an idea of how we&#39;re doing. But I also look around

during lessons and talk with students, instructors and testers.

Very quickly on the numbers.

Dinghies. Overall, we are teaching about the same number of students as pre-pandemic, but for

some reason the numbers are quite different on different days. About 14% fewer on Saturdays,

43% more on Mondays, and 11% more on Thursdays. This is interesting but not a problem. We

seem to be able to meet the demand, sometimes thanks to instructors who take a group out on

a keelboat.

Keelboats. We are teaching 12% fewer students than pre-pandemic, and we have not been able

to satisfy the demand. We are doing better than last year, largely because we have more

instructors active. Last year, we were turning away 60% of the signups, and this year we are

down to 40%.

Ratings. 15% more members earned Junior in 2022 than in all of 2021, but 33% fewer earned

Novice. I think this is an anomaly due to an exceptionally high number of Novices in 2021. The

numbers are better than 2020 and roughly even with pre-pandemic years. We had 3 new

Seniors and 2 new Cruisers in 2022.

I want to highlight a couple of things. We did something new this year for Fast Track. We held

the same number of sessions (5) and had the same number of participants (80), but this year

we had an overall coordinator, Mike Jones, and so we had a better program overall. Handoff

was better from one set of coordinators to the next, signup flow was better (although not

perfect), and we are already planning for next year. Mike even has some coordinators signed up

already. Second, I&#39;ve been looking at the hours logged for instruction. What I see is 20

instructors who have logged over 40 hours in 2022, and a couple well over 100. And there are

some new members this year who have thrown themselves into teaching. Thank you all for

keeping our program going.

I want to mention that there is a significant rework of the Dinghy Sailing Manual in progress.

What started out as an update for the new Touras turned into a serious review and rewrite of a

lot of it. Thanks to all who are participating. And speaking of Touras, I think they are a great

addition to our program, and we will be figuring out the right mix of Touras and Quests going

forward.

Looking forward.

We will have a Senior Study Grour early next year, and George Posner is coordinating it. He has

grabbed it with 4 hands (an Italian idiom), and he has found some venues for it that we can

afford. So after a couple of years of Zoom, we will be doing it in person this time. The

announcement went out this week, so if you are a Junior sailor interested in going for Senior or

in just expanding your knowledge and skills, sign up for it.

This winter we will focus on a couple of things. One is sailing workshops, focused on specific

skills. This has already started with Yiheng&#39;s incredibly detailed and well planned workshops on

slow sailing, COB, and docking. He&#39;s set a high standard for the rest of us to follow. We are

wrestling with whether to integrate these in some way into Satuday lessons or to do them

separately, and I welcome your ideas on this. The other thing is instructor training. We will have

workshops on how to teach specific skills. We will also repeat the all weekend workshop taught

by Morgan Collins, manager of Cal Adventures and US Sailing Instructor Trainer, that was so

successful last year. In addition, we will hold a workshop on instrucing, probably a half day, with

senior instructors talking about how to teach various skills.

We are also working on a better signup system for keelboat lessons. With the demand we have,

we need something better and fairer.

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

going at a very high level.

Port Captain:

No report.

Secretary

Camile Antinori will be stepping up as a co-secretary.

Treasurer: