Finish building and launching our three new docks (We have two large docks that replace the “old generation” plywood versions, as well as one finger dock that should help improve the boat parking situation on busy weekends.)
Migrate all sails and boat rigging supplies to our new sail shed
Clean up and organize the clubhouse and sauna
Move, chop, and stack firewood
Launch the Ensign and pontoon boat
Clean and rig the club fleet, plus a few select boat repairs and improvements
Installing new steps on “Ankle Roll Hill”
Install landscape edging outside of shoreline piles
Digging a new conduit trench for Trailer Row electric improvements
Set up awnings and picnic tables
General site cleanup
This is obviously a pretty sizable project list, so we’re hoping for a solid turnout. And remember: we do ask all members to show up for at least one of the two work parties, spring or fall.
If you’re a returning member, you know the drill. If you’re new, our work party starts at 10:00 AM, and usually runs until 4:00 or 5:00 PM. You don’t need to show up for the whole day, and we can make good use of whatever time you have to volunteer. When you arrive, ask for Cathy Wright. She’s our volunteer coordinator for the day, and will help connect you up with a project.
In terms of equipment, we typically have what we need on hand. You’ll just need work clothes, and work gloves are always recommended. And we do have an unusual number of digging projects this spring, so if you have a favorite shovel, you could bring it.
And special note for class members:
We’d love to see you guys for the work party! This is a great chance to meet other ASC members, and you can learn a lot about the boats and the club by helping to everything ready for the season.
And special thanks to Nancy Black, Dave Johnson, TL Stanbro, Bruce Lee, Jim Johnson, Darren Black, and Cathy Wright for attending our site committee meeting to help plan the work party. And thanks also to Will Merriman for helping with the materials run.
For those who don’t know, the Northern Lights Regatta is the youngest regatta at the ASC. It started a little more than a decade ago and was originally called the “Frostbite Regatta,” but it was rebranded to encourage more participation. :-) The format of the race harkens back to less formal days of ASC racing, with a start by the docks and a course around the islands near the club.
We had thirteen boats on the line this year, which made the 2024 race by far the best attended in ASC history. Our podium finishers were all in Buccaneer 18s, with Steve Ryan and Darren Black in 1st, Brie Busey and Oliver Wright in 2nd, and Christopher and Joyce Cryan in 3rd. Bart Hawkins was the first non-Bucc finisher and took 4th place in his Megabyte.
And a few “honorable mentions” in this year’s regatta: Clayton Oberlitner and Adam McArthur completed their first-ever race using a spinnaker. (It was also their first race on a Buccaneer 18.) After a disastrous last-place start, they clawed their way back to 9th and flew their spinnaker with no major mishaps. Adrian Cryan also completed his first solo race in a laser!
You can read the full results with elapsed and corrected times here:
Thanks to the Christensen family (Erik, Olivia, and Ansel) for serving on the race committee. And thanks as always to Paul Willing for the regatta-scoring magic. This was an epic closeout event, and we’re hoping we can carry the positive momentum into 2025.
Hannah Pratt, Bart Hawkins, Jimmy O’Rourke, and Nancy Black posted many great pictures on the #general channel of the ASC Discord server. If anybody else has good shots of the weekend, please share them there!
Fall Work Party
One more “wow” goes out for the work party. (I feel like Owen Wilson.) We had a huge turnout, and to quote member Hannah Pratt, we had so many people working at once that it felt like a movie set! The day started with a robust “Gov Cup Winners Breakfast” provided by Adriana Ramirez and Gabe Black. It included eggs, bacon, pancakes, and coffee and was augmented by various pastries brought by members.
Here’s a quick overview of the tasks we completed:
Removed the old (and very rotten) sauna roof
Trimmed the shoreline willows down to 36”
Planted two new birches and removed the grass on the “Hill of Doom.” We’ll plant more bushes and install landscape edging in the spring.
Folded and winterized the docks
Cleaned and organized the clubhouse and sauna
Winterized the Ensign, pontoon boat, and RIB
Cleaned the club dinghies and inventoried sails and parts
Prepped and leveled the grill area so we can install pavers
Winterized the motors on club boats
Put away all tarps and canopies
Tested all the old marks
Look ma, no roof!
It’s hard to overstate how important our spring and fall work parties are to making the ASC function. These events concentrate most of the site and boat-related work to just two days, allowing us to enjoy the classes and regatta for the rest of the season. So, thanks to everybody who made it out to help!
Hannah Pratt, Bark Hawkins, Jimmy O’Rourke, and Nancy Black all posted a bunch of great pictures of the weekend in the #general channel of the club Discord ser
Mini Fall Work Party This Coming Sunday
Despite all the hard work last Sunday, we still have a few more projects to finish up:
Installing the pavers in the upgraded grill area (Darren may be able to finish this during the week)
Painting the clubhouse floor
Building the new sauna roof
Nancy Black, Cathy Wright, and Carmen Summerfield are working on the clubhouse floor, Darren is managing the pavers, and Steve Ryan and I are working on the sauna roof. We could probably use one more hand on the roof project, so if you have some carpentry skills and time to donate, please let me know. We’re all planning to be working by 10:00 a.m. on Sunday.
Upcoming Events
Our sailing season is done, but there’s still plenty to look forward to! Stay tuned for updates on all of the following:
The Northern Lights Regatta is this coming Saturday. It’s our final regatta of 2025, and we have everybody can make it for one last weekend of sailing, campfires, and camaraderie. The Northern Lights is traditionally a low-key race with an old-school “around the islands” format, and it’s as much an all-fleet group sail as it is a race. It’s a single day format, and we aim for an early afternoon start so we can have sailing done and boats put away before nightfall.
We’ll send out official race instructions later this week, so stay tuned for more information. As always, new sailors and first-time racers are extra welcome.
Work Party on Sunday
Our end-of-season work party is this coming Sunday starting at 10:00 AM. As a reminder, we ask all members to come out for at least one work party (spring or fall), so that we have enough hands to get through all of our tasks. We usually have everything wrapped up by 4:00 PM, and you don’t need to be there for the entire work party. Even an hour or two of help is appreciated!
The site committee is meeting this Wednesday at 6:30 PM to plan out the work party task list, and they’ll send an update with the detailed plan after that meeting.
BNAC 2025 in Alaska
The Buccaneer 18 Class Association has selected Alaska as the site of the 2025 Buccaneer 18 North American Championship (BNAC). This is a considerable honor for the ASC, and as far as we can tell, this will be the first-ever national level sailing event in the history of our state. Thanks to Bruce Lee, Brie Busy, Steve Ryan, and Nancy Black for leading the charge on this effort.
The BNAC will bring a group of national-level sailors from around the country to our club for a week of racing, learning, and socializing. The BNAC has been described as a traveling “sailing camp for adults,” so it’s a natural fit for the ASC. We’ll have more details forthcoming, and we’re looking for folks interesting in volunteering for a BNAC planning committee.
This is the 58th annual Governor’s Cup, and as far as we can tell, it’s the oldest continuously running organized sporting event in Alaska. Mt. Marathon lost the title in 2020 when they wisely canceled the race due to COVID-19. Fortunately for us, sailboat racing was unusually well suited to social distancing.
For this year’s Gov Cup, we’ll race on both Saturday and Sunday. We’ll have our skippers’ meeting on Saturday at 2:00 PM and on Sunday at 11:00 AM. Racing will follow the skippers’ meeting on both days as soon as winds allow. We’re planning starts for two classes:
Beginner sailors are welcome, and if you’re new to racing, we’d recommend sailing in the Open Fleet, even if you’re racing a Buccaneer. (The Bucc class can be a little intense.) And note that we’re still looking for one more race committee volunteer. Absolutely no experience is required, and working on the race committee is a great way to learn about racing. If you’d like to help out, just point a note in the #racing channel on the ASC Discord Server.
Instructor, long-time racer, and (occasional) Gov Cup winner Geoff Wright (that’s me!) will be putting on a free Intro to Racing clinic on Friday evening at ~7:00 PM. New sailors are strongly encouraged to attend, especially those who took our classes earlier this summer.
We’ll have a group potluck on Saturday evening after racing. Rumor has it that Jonathon “Dr. Party” Ramirez will DJ the event, so bring your best dish and your dancing shoes!
Also, Nancy Black is cleared to walk, so the planned scooter race is CANCELED. :-)
It’s gonna be an epic weekend, so we hope to see a packed house of sailors!
Polaris K-12 Sailing Intensive
For the second time in ASC history, we hosted twenty young aspiring sailors and two teachers from Polaris K-12 for a four-day introduction to sailing at the club. I was lucky enough to be out there with a crew of volunteers for an absolutely magical time.
I had too many “favorite moments to count,” but I thought it was worth sharing the last-day reflections of two of the students. One said it was the best Polaris intensive she had ever participated in and even better than the Disney World intensive. Another said the whole experience was like an amazing dream, where when you wake up, you just wish you could go back to sleep and keep dreaming.
I want to give special thanks to Addy Wright for making this happen. (She was also responsible for the first Polaris K-12 intensive when she was a sophomore in high school.) She took a full week off of work to volunteer with the kids at school and then at the lake. And that’s after teaching both beginner classes and getting her US Sailing Instructor certification this summer.
In addition to Addy, our volunteer crew for Polaris K-12 sailing intensive included the following folks:
Christopher Cryan (and Adrian was in the intensive!)
Angie Oberlitner
Clayton Oberlitner
Cathy Wright
Oliver Wright
Darren Black
Steve Ryan
Darren wasn’t on the official volunteer roster, but he showed up and helped anyway because … he’s Darren. And although Steve wasn’t on-site during the intensive, I included him anyway because the club boats were all in perfect working order, and nobody has worked harder to make this happen than Steve. (It was fun to tell the kids about how the Flyin’ Ryan got its name.)
Fireweed Ladies Race & Brewery Sail
The Fireweed Ladies Race was soggy this year, but we had a dauntless group of women skippers out despite the weather. Congratulations to Angie Oberlitner and Brie Busey for taking the top seat on the podium. The full results are here:
On the Sunday following the race, we had our first-ever fleet sail to the Susitna Brewing Company. Continues were damp, but spirits were sunny. I’m personally hoping this will become a regular feature of Fireweed. :-)
New Discord Page on the ASC Site
We now have a permanent Discord page on the site that explains the platform, all the channels, and our server rules. The page also includes a form for requesting an invitation. You can find it here:
On the whole, this is a great thing. It’s good to have a club that is active and growing, and it’s great that we’re bucking national trends where participation in outdoor long-form activities like sailing is declining. It means that we must be doing something right!
But growth has its challenges, and one of those is how to successfully support, integrate, and communicate with our new members who have questions about everything from rigging boats to finding sailing partners.
In the past, we had an ASC members Google Group. That worked fairly well when we were smaller, but as we grew, active conversations could easily generate north of thirty emails per day, which was just too much for many of our members. We finally closed down the Google Group earlier this year after thirteen years(!) of active service.
But this has left us with a bit of a “communications hole.” The website and email push announcements are great for formal announcements, but they don’t allow for casual “many-to-many” group communication like the Google Group did. To that end, we’re standing up a Discord server for interested club members.
And note that you don’t need to participate. We’ll continue to post official club updates via the website and email notifications using MembershipWorks. But if you’re looking for a digital connection with your fellow ASC members, the Discord Server is definitely the place. New members are absolutely encouraged to join, as are any long-time ASC members who are looking for an online sailing community and a chance to support our new members.
What is Discord?
Discord is a user-friendly communications app that you can use on your phone, tablet, or computer. It started as a platform for gamers but has evolved into a more general tool for all types of clubs and community groups. It’s like a digital clubhouse where members can chat, share information, and stay connected.
A key feature of Discord is “channels,” which are like permanent group texts for specific topics. For example, we have already set up channels for general sailing discussion, education, and off-topic (non-sailing) conversation. This keeps conversations organized and easy to follow.
If you’re new to Discord, you can read more about it in this beginner’s guide from Wired:
A Facebook Group was the other obvious choice, but Discord offers a few advantages for our purposes:
User Experience: Discord’s interface is designed for seamless communication, with less emphasis on social media features like likes and shares.
Organized Conversations: Discord’s channel system allows us to create separate spaces for different topics, making it easier to keep discussions organized, unlike Facebook Groups, where all posts appear in a single feed.
Accessibility: Not everyone uses Facebook. Some people prefer to avoid social media for various reasons, including privacy concerns or simply not wanting to maintain a Facebook account.
Notification Control: Discord offers fine-grained notification settings, allowing you to control how and when you receive notifications.
Real-Time Communication: Discord offers real-time voice and video chat, which is great for meetings, events, or casual hangouts.
Didn’t we start a Discord server a few years ago?
Yup! We’ve actually been running this server in a low-key way since 2022 and had several tech-savvy members join. But since that time, we’ve closed down the old Google Group, leaving a hole in our communications strategy. Also, Discord has become much more mainstream outside the gaming community since we originally launched. So we figured that it was time for a more official push.
Getting Started
To get started, you first need to install Discord on your phone or computer. For phones or tablets, use the App Store or Google Play. And you can download clients for Windows, macOS, or Linux here:
(Note that Discord is free and doesn’t contain any ads. And if you’re wondering how Discord makes money, here’s how.)
Once you have the client installed, just click on the invite link we sent out via email. From there, take a brief look at #welcome-and-rules channel, and then jump into the conversation!
Alaska Sailing Club 