Fall 2000 Telltale Archive

Full Fall 2000 Archived Issue   

Commodore’s Report By John Pyles     
Hello WYC! Well, a great summer has passed and now we begin the fall and the REAL wind. Thanks to all those who helped out fixing boats, teaching classes and organizing activities. Welcome to all new members from summer and autumn quarter! As many of you might have noticed the Seahawks have moved into Husky Stadium. Despite the disruption I hope we will have a great autumn quarter and work around the inconvenience.
    In the past few quarters we have made progress in making lesson signups easier through the web and increasing our membership. I hope that we can continue this trend and start looking to other ways we can improve the club. I think topping the list would be member retention. There are some new faces around the club who have been helping out a lot, most notably some new fleet captains, assistant fleet captains and assistant instructors that have been doing a great job. But, we still lose the majority of our new novice members after a quarter. To avoid burnout, which I think is one of the club's worst enemies, we need to try and continue to get novice sailors and new members more active in the club. I and others have made a number of suggestions of how to do this. Probably the best way is activities for newer members such as laser racing and daysails that get them more involved in the club. I again really, really encourage anyone with an idea for an activity to step forward and run with it. There's a lot of fun stuff we could do to help get new members involved and make them feel welcome. And, new members, let those of us who have been around a while know what we can do to make the
club more fun.
    There are a lot of other things going on, come to the general meetings to find out what's up. Other than that, take a class, go sailing, take a new member sailing, have fun!

Summer 2000 Telltale Archive

Full Summer 2000 Archived Issue

Commodore’s Report By John Pyles

Hello WYC! We've had a great spring quarter! We set a goal of 150 new novice sailors and we passed it! Great job to Justin Fallstrom our Vice-Commodore and everyone else who helped. WYC had almost 400 members last quarter. Hopefully we can keep it up and continue to grow.

Other news and thank yous: Big thanks to Leslie Carver and Eva Wong for putting on Spring Snooze 'n Cruise. There was good weather, a lot of boats, good food and I think everyone had a great time. Thank you to all instructors and assistant instructors. Without you we could not have had such a successful quarter. I encourage you to teach again. We need instructors! The only thing that held us back from more classes last quarter was a lack of instructors, there was demand. Contact Justin if you'd like to teach. Also, thanks to everyone who fixed boats. Our fleet is looking quite good right now and almost all boats are sailable. There are still a few lasers
with holes in them, so please come down and help out at the workparties on Thursdays.

There will be quite a bit of activity this summer in WYC so renew your membership! There are several classes including a number of specialty classes such as 505, daysailor, catamaran and high performance dinghy. If you're ready to
advance your sailing to the next level, sign up. On that note: lesson
sign-ups are now ONLINE! Huge thanks to our webmaster Matt Squires for doing this project. Life will now be much simpler and convenient for all of us.

Also this summer, I would like to do a complete revision of all of our club publications. This includes the day-sailing guide, keelboat guide, tests, forms, etc. If you would like to help out on this huge project please contact me. More information will be posted on the web and to WYC as we progress.

That's about it for now. Sign up for a lesson, go sailing, have fun!

Spring 2000 Telltale Archive

Full Spring 2000 Archived Issue

Commodore’s Report By John Pyles

Hello all!


I hope everyone had a good winter. Spring is now close at hand and that means it’s time to start sailing again! I’ve been having a lot of fun serving as your Commodore thus far and look forward to having a great spring quarter.


Our club is doing well. The majority of our boats are in working order and all the fleets are active and sailing. A lot of people have been working hard in the club to keep things going. Special thanks to those people who have put in the time to keep up the club: my other officers, fleet captains, committee chairs, instructors and those of you who came to work parties. It is your dedication that keeps this club strong.


But, of course we can always make things better. This spring will be an important time for the club as we prepare for two years of disruptions during summer and fall quarters. As many of you know the Seahawks will be moving into Husky Stadium for a two year stay in August. This means that almost all weekends in late summer and fall will be occupied by footballs games. Of course this will have a significant effect on our weekend classes and membership. This challenge is a great opportunity for us to improve our club and make it more fun for both you the current members and our new members.


I’d like to accomplish two things this spring: bring in 150 new members, and increase the activity of the club to make things more fun for current members. These are reachable goals. As I said before we have 40 good boats, a beautiful lake, a strong base of active members and a lot of potential. To make things happen we simply need the help of you, the members.


We already have a lot of things going on this spring including Snooze ‘n Cruise, the Annual Opening Day Party, specialty classes, a racing clinic and laser racing. I’d also like to try some new things like dingy day trips to Kirkland, afternoon mini-clinics and organized group open houses. The idea is to provide more opportunities for wyc members to sail with each other and have fun. The officers and program director are also working on ways to make the nuts and bolts of the club run more smoothly. The new wyc database will be up and running soon to simplify record keeping, and improvements will also be made to the sail locker.


As you can see there is a lot going on! If you would like to help with anything, have an idea you’d like to run with, or see a way in which the club could be improved please speak up! With the support and enthusiasm of members this spring should be a lot of fun and a lot of good sailing. What we need most right now is more instructors and help with publicity! New posters and flyers will be available next week in the office. Come by, grab some posters and help spread the word about the club!


Thanks again to all members who helped out last quarter! I look forward to seeing you all soon!