Spring 2001 Telltale Archive

Full Spring 2001 Archived Issue 

Commodore’s Report    John Pyles  Hello WYC! Well even though the weather seems to be about the same, spring is almost here. Despite the lack of wind and small classes, we had a good winter quarter. What we didn't have in numbers we made up in getting stuff done. We had a number of successful work parties and got a lot of boats fixed. In addition we've purchased a new computer for the club office to help out our great new Program Director Cathy, and the club database is up, running and almost complete! Thanks to Matt for all his hard work on this! We've had lot of club business things going on such as by-laws revision, work on a new budget, and revision of the day-sailor handbook. We also hope to have the UW Racing Team joining us back at the WAC soon. They are in the process of raising money to purchase more FJs and will then be moving their practices back to the WAC. We look forward to having them around more and a more integral part of WYC. Also thanks to the social committee for arranging the movie nights and pool sharks to keep give us something to do while there's no wind. Going into spring quarter we are lucky to fill many of our vacant positions with new, enthusiastic people. We have a new purser, quartermaster, publicity chair, computer consultant, assistant keelboat fleet captain and double-handed fleet captain. Spring quarter will again be a big push for new members and getting old members who haven't been around for a while active in the club again. We will have the usual array of different sorts of lessons including a weekly intermediate class. There will also be regattas, social events, some special lectures, the annual Opening Day festivities, Snooze 'n Cruise, and more. This spring in classes we are concentrating more on quality than quantity, with a better students to instructor ratio. The goal is to work on member retention and getting new members, especially students, active in the club for the long term. A mentoring program is also starting up to help with this, contact Adam if you're interested in that. As always, if you have any ideas or suggestions come to a meeting or contact me. A final thank you to Heather for her great work on the last few Telltales. Heather took over the reigns a while back and successfully moved the Telltale onto the web. Also thanks for your burgee and reciprocal work. Matt and Heather are heading off to the East coast to a big boat that's going to go places where the water is swimming temperature, I know I'm jealous. Good luck you guys! We'll miss you! To everyone else: go sailing, come to the parties! See you on the water...

Winter 2001 Telltale Archive

Full Winter 2001 Archived Issue 

Commodore’s Report    John Pyles  Hello WYC! I hope everyone had a good fall quarter and got some sailing in. Despite the inconvenience of the Seahawks, the club had a good quarter as well. Our membership is good and we are doing well financially despite having few free weekends. Snooze 'n Crooze was great, (big thanks to Leslie and Debbie for that), and our new social committee threw a great Holiday Party (thanks to Megan, Susan and Andrea for that). We have continued to work on improving the nitty gritty aspects of the club such as the database and membership card system. Thanks to our computer guy Matt we have a new database, and thanks to Heather we now have lovely stickers for our cards instead of stamps. Our boats are looking good thanks to the hard work of our fleet captains and all of you that came to work parties. We have also added a few fun additions to our fleet such as the new Laser Pico and the International 14. All in all it was a great quarter. Hope everyone had fun, and thanks to everyone who helped out! Winter quarter is now almost upon us. Justin, our Vice-Commodore, is working hard on getting classes together. We are always in need of instructors, so if you are interested in teaching a class contact Justin. If you would like to take a class check out the WYC website. This quarter at Justin's lead we have decided to try and change WYC’s teaching philosophy somewhat. As most of you know one of our primary goals this last year has been increasing retention of new novice sailors in the club. We feel that a change in our teaching philosophy would help this goal. This quarter we will be working on getting at least one instructor for every four or five students, thus increasing the personal attention in classes. Class size might be reduced because of this, but the goal is to provide high quality instruction that really makes students comfortable novice sailors by the end of their class. The idea is that the more novice sailors know and the more comfortable they are, the more they will go sailing and the more likely they are to stay in the club and hopefully become more active. I'm confident that this will be a good thing for WYC given the skill of our instructors and the great job they are doing now with classes that are sometimes a little too full. In order to do this the club needs your help! If you have taught in the past or are interested in becoming an assistant instructor please contact Justin. There will be an instructors clinic on January 6th to give you an intro to the basics of teaching sailing, contact Justin about this as well. That's about all I have to say right now. If you have any other concerns, problems, etc. always feel free to email or chat with me. Have a great holidays and I hope to see you on the water next quarter!