2008 Commodore’s Letter
Welcome to another sailing season on Lake Wawasee. 2008 promises to be another fun and exciting year for sailboat racing at Lake Wawasee. We have made a number of changes this year with the goal of improving the sailing experience for everyone. First and foremost, we have hired a Principal Race Officer (PRO) for Sunday racing this year. Also, five skippers with PRO experience have volunteered to oversee the Saturday racing. We hope this will help us deliver higher quality, more consistent racing for the upcoming race season. We will still require volunteer race committees to assist the PRO’s, but the PRO will be in charge of setting courses, running the starting sequence and all other aspects of managing the racing.
Second, last November five of our club members attended a US Sailing race management seminar with the goal of becoming a certified race officer. The members who attended the seminar were Bill Allen, Brad Wagnon, Terry Moorman, Steve Gardt and I. Besides those five, I believe Dick Tillman and Jeff Schmahl were already certified race officers. Please feel free to talk to any of these people if you have questions about racing rules and race management.
Third, Bill Allen, Terry Moorman and I attended a two day US Sailing One Design Symposium. This symposium brought together people from across the country involved in one design sailing of many different classes. The goal was to share ideas and practices of all of the classes and yacht clubs in attendance to help foster our sport. One thing that was clear to me was in order for our fleets and club to remain healthy and grow, we need to proactively promote our sport and club.
As part of that, we will initiate several new programs this year to help attract new members. We will hold an open house in early June to invite prospective new members to come by and experience the club and sailing. We are also going to investigate supporting racing with the local schools around the lake. I’d like to ask all of you to help with these endeavors. If you see new people around the club, please take the time to talk with them and encourage them to join the club. Without new members, our fleets will slowly dwindle to nothing.
We have made a few changes in our social calendar this year to try to build additional participation in these events. We have eliminated one cocktail party to lighten the social schedule and we have scheduled the annual summer brunch before racing to see if that will increase attendance. We will continue to hold a few Friday evening fun races. These events are greatly enjoyed by the people who have participated in the past and I encourage everyone to try one of these fun social events.
Let’s hope we have good winds all season long and a terrific racing season.
Steve Bonifas
Commodore