COMMODORE S COMMENTS. Willson is bringing chili so if you are coming bring a snack to share. Of course it s BYOB

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1 Dec COMMODORE S COMMENTS Willson Jenkins has the club TV up and running and is hosting an imprompu Iron Bowl Party this Saturday 11/30/2013 Starts around 2:00 PM Willson is bringing chili so if you are coming bring a snack to share. Of course it s BYOB Next Lifted Tack will be the February edition Club Aug The sailing season has wound down at MSSC. and our short winter nap is upon us. But before you know it 2014 will be here. I wanted to give everyone an update on what happened at the annual meeting and a few other things as well. By the way, next year I'm going to check the football schedule before scheduling the AGM. It wasn't very smart to have the meeting the same night as the Alabama-LSU game. That won't happen again next year! First of all, we elected three new board members - Tom Cromer is the new Land Commodore, Jim Farrell is the new Harbor Master (Docks and slips) and Paul Hill is the new Clubhouse Commodore - from now on I'll refer to them as the land guy, the docks guy, and the clubhouse guy. I'm excited to have each one of them on the board. Thanks for stepping up! We were supposed to elect a new Secretary but we haven't had anyone step up for that position yet. Since no one was elected at the AGM the board will have to appoint someone to fill the position. The by-laws change was approved redefining the junior membership category to include anyone taking a sailing class at a local college or university. The membership also passed a motion authorizing the board of governors to negotiate an agreement with the UNA Health and Physical Education Department to conduct portions of a sailing class at MSSC. There's still work to be done, but we can now start talking to UNA about this possibility. I'll keep you posted as things progress. Other topics of discussion included: Our club resident has resigned and moved his trailer from the club premises. We are looking for a new resident. If you have anyone in mind let the board know and we can provide an application and job description. There was some general discussion of electrical problems at boat docks. Boat US has reported several instances of boats not being properly grounded, with the potential of people being electrocuted if they're in the water near a boat that has this problem. There was also a case recently at Joe Wheeler of a power surge causing a boat that was plugged in to catch fire with the result

2 Commodores Comments continued from P.1 being the boat was a total loss. The board is looking into a way to check our docks to see if we are having any electrical issues. If you need to do any work on your boat that requires getting in the water I strongly recommend shutting off the power to the dock before doing so. There will be more information on this issue coming out in the future as well. Randy Henne, a new member (along with his wife Janet) discussed some challenges they've had with parking space in our land storage area. I also have concerns about our parking lot - in my opinion improving our parking situation should be a high priority item for The board is investigating some options, but the bottom line is that we need more space. We'll be working on that this winter - stay tuned. We're like a church - we can't outgrow our parking space. There was some discussion of acoustic issues in the clubhouse. The board will need to identify someone to come up with a plan and a cost estimate to help resolve the issue, and then we'll have to prioritize that with other potential improvements to see if anything can be done. Various plans have been discussed in the past - hanging baffles from the ceiling, more flags hanging from the ceiling, etc. I'm not sure we have anyone who knows how to resolve the problem - I've been involved in trying to resolve acoustic problems in other buildings and have never seen much success, but we'll see how it goes. If anyone knows of someone that could help let me know. I know that the Depot Roundhouse in Huntsville had serious acoustic problems that were somewhat mitigated by students doing a project for a class at UAH - maybe we could do something similar with UNA? Steve Blazier had draft copies of new club rules and marina rules for review. The board will be taking action on these in the near future. We are also planning to include a "lease agreement" for boats in slips next year. This will include contact information and insurance information for each boat. We ve had cases in the past where a boat in a slip was having an issue (like a broken dock line in a high wind situation) and our resident (or no one else) was able to identify and contact the owner. Our incoming dock master and harbor master are already working hard to match up boats and owners in slips and parking spots in order to make that information readily available when necessary. The winners of the various regattas and club series were announced. Bill Parkhurst won the club series and Dave Seborg was 2nd, and Dave was the top dinghy in that series as well. Great sailing guys! One other thing I forgot to mention at the meeting is that I'm considering organizing a New Year s Day regatta. A lot of it depends on the weather, but we used to do have a regatta on New Year s Day and it was pretty popular. And now that all the good bowl games are after New Year s Day why shouldn't we go sailing? In other news: Outgoing Dock Guy Mike Hofmann and incoming Dock Guy Jim Farrell have shut off the water to the docks and blown the water out of the lines. Cold weather is here so their efforts were very timely. Great job guys! Thistle Fleet 114 at MSSC will be hosting the 2014 Southeastern Championship April 5-6. We last hosted a Thistle regatta in 2010, the South Atlantic Districts, and this regatta will include boats from the South Atlantic, Carolina, and Florida districts. I'm cautiously optimistic that we'll have a good turnout. Those were the highlights of the meeting. Please let me know if you have any questions. It's been a good first year as your commodore, and I'm hoping 2014 will be even better. Fall Work Day On Saturday November 23 rd we had a workday at MSSC. We lucked out on the weather original forecast was for rain and falling temps on Saturday morning, but it turned out that we only had the falling temps the rain moved through on Friday

3 night. Everyone was bundled up appropriately for the cool weather Bob Kuelhthau had on a set of coveralls that looked more appropriate for Wisconsin than Alabama, and Gar Bouse and I had stocking caps to cover our bald spots which in Gar's case includes his entire head! Fortunately we moved around enough to stay warm. the past but it's grown back up if we clear it again we'll have to make sure to maintain it properly. Randy works Joel supervises We looked for Bob, every time we heard a splash The work day actually started on Thursday the 21 st when Nolan Richards went solo. He cleared out the garden area east of the clubhouse and planted bulbs can't wait to see the show in the spring! He also sprayed privet on the east end of our parking lot. Good job Nolan! The rest of the gang showed up on Saturday and got a fair amount done. We cut back the stuff on the shoreline that we originally thought was sumac but Bob K told us it was something else that I can't recall right now. Interestingly enough we found a lake behind all that stuff. We didn't try to cut all the privet and brush that runs eastward along the shoreline that will be a job for something bigger than a chain saw. But at least you can see the lake from the clubhouse now. We also cut a bunch of stuff that was starting to overhang the walkway between A and B docks. That area is another candidate for more heavy clearing in the spring but if we do that we'll have to make sure we maintain it. Unfortunately we have a lot of our property that has been cleared in Tom the swamp man wrangling logs A number of other jobs were accomplished. The Club 420s were put back under the pavilion after being washed and having the leaves cleaned out of them. And we carefully put all the parts back where they belonged so hopefully no parts will come up missing next spring. We thought about covering them and leaving them out, but the covers are about shot. Some brush was cleared out around the steps leading down to the dock. We diagnosed the problem with a couple of electrical outlets in the camping area. We made lists of boats and owners in the parking area. It s neat how much can be accomplished when you have lots of help.

4 Remembering this - the Treasurer and Secretary of your Club are volunteers and both positions have openings every two years. So here is how we do it at this time. My suggestion for the Treasurer to take on the full process was not embraced ( ha-ha) so the back-and-forth communications are as follows. Markus & Paul knocking back the brush Thanks to everyone who turned out you all did a great job! Nolan Richards, Mike Hofmann, Bob Stagg Rick McAdams, Joel Verplank, Paul Hill Jim Farrell, Tom Cromer, Randy Henne Markaus Thompson, Bob Kuehlthau Chris McGraw, Randy Myers, Gar Bouse Membership Application Process By Melissa Parkhurst Hello MSSC members from your Secretary as MY TERM ENDS! I will be happy to assist the next Secretary in any way. The duties include recording minutes for Board and other official meetings and managing membership processes. I learned a lot about our method of processing applications. Because you, as members and contact persons for applicants, may hear occasional frustrations from applicants, I outlined our process for the Board. Once considered, it becomes easy to see how delays are sometimes inevitable. By request of the Board, I am passing along the method to you so you can assist any new members as they pass along this, somewhat convoluted, pathway. Of course, if anyone has a better idea on ways to do this, let the Board know. The prospective member sends the application and the application fee to the Secretary of the Board who sends the application check to the Treasurer. Then the Secretary posts the application on the Club bulletin board and sends the application to all Members per for a two week period for Member input. Pending no concerns from Members, the Secretary presents the application at the next Board meeting. (The Board normally meets once a month but applications that come in just after a meeting may be delayed in being presented by 1-2 weeks). After being approved by the Board, the Secretary notifies the applicant (and Treasurer) of approval and to expect an invoice from the Treasurer regarding pro-rated dues. Once the new member sends in his/her check to the Treasurer, the Treasurer notifies the Secretary who then sends a welcome letter with a key to the Clubhouse and the top-secret gate combination. The Secretary notifies the Webmaster to give the new member access to the Members Only section of the Club's website. The Secretary adds the new member's name, address, phone number, Emil address, and mailing address to the membership list on the Website. Note - if the new member desires a dock slot, they must contact the Harbor Master who will determine if one is immediately available. If so, the member now sends a check for this to the Treasurer. Regarding changes/additions to the

5 Member list. If a member wants to change an address or contact information on the Website Membership List, he should contact the Secretary. PLEASE NOTE - the Website membership list is NOT the same as the mailing list. So if the Secretary changes the Website information, the Webmaster must have also changed the ALL MEMBERS listing. As you can see, these contact points can disrupt the flow of information if not standing always at the ready. But - we volunteers sometimes have the audacity to travel or turn our minds to other aspects of life and if one is out of town or out of the loop for other reasons, the whole process comes to a slow-down. So, we hope you are supporting applicants and new members as they apply and now you can help them understand and also know where you might intervene to help. Welcome New Members! By Tommy Glenn We've had several new members join the club in It's always great to get new folks in, and I hope you all feel welcome. I'd like to encourage you to check out the schedule on our website, come out to the club often, and get involved. Please let me know if there's anything I can do to help get involved or if you have any questions. You can reach me at tbglenn@gmail.com or at home at Here's the honor roll of new members in 2013: -Randy and Janet Henne, Madison, AL, newly retired, own a Sage 17 Pocket Cruiser named Sage Advice. -Kevin, Angela, and Griffin Gooch from Killen, AL, own a 18 foot sloop named Victoria 18. Griffin has been to Sail Seminar twice now and is becoming a fine young sailor. Robert Smith & Michael Hasty from Florence, AL, own a 21 foot Hunter. Emily Stephenson from Florence, AL, student - Junior Member. Christian Walker from Florence, AL, student - Junior Member. Emily & Christian both attended Sail Seminar and are interested in learning to sail our Club 420s. Thomas Mathews & Lisa Keys-Mathews, from Florence, AL, own a 23 foot Columbia named Perseverance. James Gadberry from Athens, AL, owns a 16 foot Trimaran named Windrider. John Sworm is a returning member. John attended Sail Seminar several years ago. And while we're at it here are members who joined in 2012: James Noland & Kristy Clopton from Florence, AL. David & Mary Lord from Muscle Shoals, AL. Please join me in welcoming them and making and. think about inviting them to go sailing. Bloody Mary Regatta Report By Tommy Glenn I haven't been able to travel with my boat much this year, so when the opportunity presented itself to go to a Thistle regatta in a new location Andrew Putnam and I jumped at the chance. We attended the 2013 Bloody Mary regatta at the Western Carolina Sailing Club (WCSC) near Anderson, SC. The Bloody Mary is the 5 th of 6 regattas in the Southeastern Fall Series. Andrew and I did the Great Pumpkin at the Birmingham Sailing Club which is the 4 th of the 6 regattas, and then two

6 weeks later was the Bloody Mary. It's about a 5 ½ hour drive from my house, which includes driving through Atlanta fortunately we went through the ATL after dark so the traffic had thinned out a bit. The WCSC is an interesting club. It's on Lake Hartwell, and the property originally was an island. The club built a causeway from the land to the island, so the club is nearly surrounded by water. They have maybe 30 acres and 250 members. It's a lot bigger than our club but most clubs we go to are bigger than ours. but it was a little embarrassing to have forgotten my rain gear. Fortunately Andrew was smarter than me and had brought his rain gear. Then Andrew said I think that's hail and sure enough the rain drops were bouncing off the boat. So that was a first I've never sailed in hail before! Fortunately there was no lightning, just pea sized hail and a LOT of wind. At the start of race 3 it was blowing 20 and gusting to 28, which is a bit much for Thistles. We slogged about a quarter of the way up the first beat, my main ragging almost the entire time and Andrew having to dump the jib fairly often to keep us from going over. At some point we came to the mutual conclusion that we weren't having a great time and it wasn't worth destroying a set of sails to beat 2 boats instead of 1, so we headed for the club that involved bearing off to a beam reach. We were on a plane in about two seconds, going faster than I've ever gone in a sailboat. It felt like we were skipping from wave to wave what a blast! It was worth the DNF to go fast for a while and beat the crowd to the ramp. WCSC Church of Sailing The sailing was pretty fun, although Andrew and I didn't do real well. There were 19 Thistles and we finished ahead of 1. But it was memorable for the weather on Saturday. The weather forecast was for sunny skies, highs in the low to mid 60s, wind from the SSW at 10-15, and 0% chance of rain. I've said many times you should never believe the weather forecast well this time I didn't take my own advice and left my foul weather jacket in the car. After the first race we looked off to the west there were dark clouds on the horizon. And it looked like there was rain in them. Sure enough, during the second race two squalls came through with some wind and rain with really big drops. Then between race 2 and race 3 another squall blew through with more rain. I was starting to get wet fortunately I wasn't too cold due to my space age bib and not wearing any cotton (cotton kills!) Andrew s tent Blown in the wind The next day the wind was much lighter and we finished better unfortunately the DNF on Saturday was our undoing. But we had a really good time, and I'm hoping to make the Bloody Mary a regular stop for team 3600 on the Thistle Southeastern Fall Series.

7 MEMBERS PARTICIPATION NEEDED By Tommy Glenn My parents joined MSSC in 1974, and I've been sailing here ever since. Back then we had some pretty large regattas and a lot of participation. Interestingly enough, our membership wasn't any larger than it is today - matter of fact it may have been smaller, but we had a larger percentage of people participating on a regular basis in various activities, regattas, social events, etc. Back then more people used to travel to regattas as well. Things aren't like that as much these days - we have more members but participation isn't what it used to be. Some of that is probably just a sign of the times. There are so many choices for how we spend our spare time, our lives are busier than ever, and frankly north Alabama isn't exactly the heart of sailing country. I remember when we had kids running around MSSC crewing for their parents, playing volleyball, finding snakes, etc. Now most of them are playing soccer, basketball or volleyball. I often wonder what, if anything, can be done about that. Apparently I'm not the only one thinking about this - I found this interesting blog on the US Sailing website, written by President Tom Hubbell. It's reprinted below. I am acquainted with Tom from the Thistle class and have a lot of respect for his opinions on sailing and sailing clubs. He presents four suggestions for rekindling interest in sailing and revitalizing our club. As you read it consider some thoughts on the four options: Maybe working with UNA on a sailing class will help us with #1. We do OK with #2 considering we're a small club in a small metro area. Maybe we could do better. I think we have #3 nailed - we just need more folks enjoying the less serious sailing and more serious après sail activities. We're not doing real well on #4. I didn't talk about it at the AGM, but I've been wondering how we could get more women involved in sailing. We used to have a number of lady skippers and crew, not so much anymore. I wanted to share this article with you to get you thinking. Maybe MSSC is OK as is, maybe we could do better. This is just some food for thought - what kind of club do you want MSSC to be? I welcome your comments, opinions, and involvement. Wednesday, November 20, 2013 Reflections from the President by US Sailing President Tom Hubbell Coast to coast, sailors want the answer on how to grow participation, revitalize the club, and get more people in boats. Over the past 12 months, I have sailed 12 different types of boats at 17 venues, and visited a total of 39 local sailing organizations (mostly clubs.) In the last 10 days I have visited nine of those clubs on the West Coast from San Francisco to San Diego. I was joined by US Sailing Membership Director Georgia McDonald and US Sailing Board of Directors members Dave Ullman and JJ Fetter. We thoroughly enjoyed meeting with the leadership of these clubs and other key individuals. What have we learned? Some clubs already know the answers. We are going to publish our local sailing solution in detail, but here s the summary of our findings. (There are some very successful exceptions to these observations, so don t scrap your program if it is really working well.) 1. It s all about youth - Ages 6 to 30: Make it easy for them to be involved and stay involved. They must be part of the club, not in the background over there. It must be (really) inexpensive and they are not

8 ready to buy a boat, yet. Provide boats for young adults! Take down the barriers for them to be involved and stay socially connected. They will be full paying members eventually. 2. It s all about learning: More training for everyone: beginners, advanced, race management, powerboat, safety, coastal cruising all of it is needed. Bring US Sailing training programs into the club. Training brings people together, improves skills, and it s fun. Thriving clubs have very active training agendas and they reach almost everyone in the club. 3. It s all about less serious racing and more serious social après-sail. Funny how that drives to support more of the more serious racing stuff also. 4. It s all about women and girls, making the schedule, programs, and functions work for them. Could be a coincidence, but clubs with women effectively working in leadership roles seem to have a successful edge. Everyone wants US Sailing to offer more training programs but the ones they want, we already have! So, we need to get the word out about what we offer, encourage members to share this information with their respective clubs and organizations. We need to certify more instructor trainers. I have also found that the sailing community has many wildly enthusiastic players in every part of the country and they are fun to be with on the journey of life. Finally, I invite you to take a dip in the pool of enthusiastic sailing leaders and educators by attending The Sailing Leadership Forum 2014 at the Hilton San Diego Resort this February. It is a great time to learn and network with motivated sailors. Sailing is important to our lives and we need your engagement to make it even better for everyone. We need local spark plugs, regional organizers, and creative people for national work groups and committees. The first step is to just show up and experience the energy of this group. We want to see you in San Diego! Commodore Secretary Treasurer 2014 MSSC BOARD OF DIRECTORS Tommy Glenn tbglenn@gmail.com Position vacant Bob Stagg Stagg10@knology.net 1 st Vice Comm. Paul Hill jpaul0113@gmail.com Contact Paul for Clubhouse rentals 2 nd Vice Comm. Tom Cromer tcromer@knology.net Harbor Master Jim Farrell jffarrell@comcast.net Contact Jim for slip availability Fleet Captain Sail Master Lifted Tack Editor Social Chair Resident Andrew Putnam Sailfast212@comcast.net Steve Blazier Sb3031@comcast.net Rick McAdams richardmcadams@comcast.net Ray & Sharon Draper rjdraper@hughes.net Position Vacant Sail fast, Tom Hubbell US Sailing President