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!
