Alaska Sailing Club

Category: Governance

  • Bylaws, Board Candidates, and Annual Meeting Reminder

    Bylaws, Board Candidates, and Annual Meeting Reminder

    No doubt everybody is focused on holiday preparations at the moment, but I wanted to make a few important announcements regarding bylaws changes, our annual meeting, and candidates for the ASC Board of Directors.

    New ASC Bylaws

    We held a special meeting on December 8th to adopt an updated set of bylaws. We had 32 memberships present, and the motion to adopt the updated bylaws passed overwhelmingly. Thanks to all our members who took time out of their busy holiday schedules to review the bylaws, provide feedback, and attend the special meeting in the midst of the holiday season.

    Annual Meeting

    Just to remind everyone, our annual meeting is scheduled for December 29th at 12:00 PM via Google Meet. Members should have already received an invitation via email, and we’ll send out a second email just to make sure that everybody has it. We have two items on the agenda:

    1. Our board member election.
    2. A “State of the ASC” report with updates on our programs (both education and racing), membership, infrastructure, and financials. And as an added bonus, the report will include plenty of great pictures from the sailing season.

    Per the updated bylaws, we need 15% of membership represented to establish a quorum for the meeting. Under the updated bylaws, family memberships count as two voting members for purposes of establishing a quorum and voting. We currently have 39 family memberships, 31 single memberships, and 5 young adult memberships. By that math, we need 17 voting members to establish our quorum for the meeting. And note that one family member can represent both voting members at the meeting.

    Hopefully, it goes without saying that we want as many members as possible at the annual meeting, and we’re hoping for a great turnout!

    Board Candidates

    Per our new bylaws, a number of our long-serving board members will term out. That includes me, Christopher Cryan, TL Stanbro, Brie Busey, and Dave Verbrugge. All of us have served at least two terms, and in some cases many more than that! Fortunately, Nancy Black, Angie Oberlitner, and Matt Flickenger have all agreed to run for a second term. In addition, Dave Johnson has also agreed to run. If anybody else has interest in running for the board, please let me know.

    We’re a small enough club that most of you know Nancy, Angie, Matt, and Dave. But I’ll get a separate post up that includes a short biography for each, so everybody has a little more background on each candidate.

    Thanks, folks. And happy holidays to all!

  • New Transient RV Parking Guidelines

    New Transient RV Parking Guidelines

    Our most recent addition is a page about bringing your RV to the club for a short-term stay. This has become an increasingly popular option in recent years, and every season, we field questions from members on this topic. Hopefully, these guidelines will help clear up some of the mysteries surrounding RV parking at the ASC.

    Thanks to the hard-working members of the ASC Site Committee (Nancy Black, Bob Chivvis, Dave Verbrugge, Matt Flickenger, Angie Oberlitner, Paul Willing, and Jim Aumann) for compiling this information.

    And for convenience, here’s the full text of this policy:

    The Alaska Sailing Club (ASC) welcomes members to bring their RVs to the club. We have space for between three and four RVs, depending on the size of rigs members bring to the club. These spaces are available on a first-come, first-served basis, and you may not hold spots for other members.

    Before you bring your RV to the club, please note the following:

    • The maximum box length for transient RVs parked at the club is 27’’.
    • Your RV must have a fire extinguisher on hand.
    • The ASC provides power at no charge, but you need to bring an extension cord.
    • The ASC does not provide potable water, although we have a lakewater sink for dishes.
    • Your RVs must be movable on short notice and removed within 72 hours if requested by the Matanuska-Susitna Borough. (If not removed, the ASC will contract a towing service to remove the RV at your expense.)
    • The maximum standard stay for a transient RV at the ASC is four days. If you’d like to stay longer, you may contact the ASC Senior Vice Commodore, and we may be able to accommodate your request if it doesn’t overlap with an ASC event weekend.
    • The ASC accepts no liability for your RV or items contained therein.

    If you arrive and all spaces are full, you can park in the small boat launch parking area immediately outside the club. You can’t park there overnight but can stay at the Big Lake North State Recreation Area, only 6.4 miles from the club.

    When you arrive at the club, please do the following:

    1. Park close to the next RV, but allow enough space for them to leave if it’s motorized.
    2. Park as close to the bank on the right as possible to allow maximum room down the middle of the trailer row.
    3. If you’re using a tow vehicle, disconnect it from your RV and move it to the regular parking area once your RV is in place.
    • While you’re staying at the ASC with your RV, please observe the following rules:
    • Do not start any ground fires. Ground fires are only allowed in the established fire pit by the waterfront.
    • You must keep the area around your RV clean and neat; no trash is allowed.
    • You may not store gasoline, kerosene, or diesel fuel in portable containers. (Propane in fit-for-purpose canisters is acceptable.)
    • You must report any fuel release to the ASC board immediately. Please use the ASC contact form and select “Feedback or suggestion” in response to the “How can we help you?” question.
    • You may not discharge firearms. In addition, the ASC prohibits using explosives, including fireworks, along the trailer row.
    • You may not dump gray water anywhere on ASC grounds.
    • Securely lock your RV when it is not in use.
    • Put away sliders and awnings after each use.

    When you leave the ASC, please make sure that the area around your RV is clean and tidy.

  • Spring 2024 Big Update

    Spring 2024 Big Update

    Website refresh

    We just completed a “gentle refresh” of the ASC website. This includes making the pages more mobile-friendly, cleaning up quite a bit of content, and updating some photography. (For the nerds in the house, the site uses WordPress with the Twenty Twenty-Four theme.) If you find any issues or have suggestions for content or features, please send us a note using the contact form and select “Website correction” in response to the “How can we help you?” question.

    New membership management system

    We’ve just updated to MembershipWorks, a professional-grade membership and event management platform. This system replaces our old Rube Goldberg collection of web forms and Google Sheets. We hope this makes for a more pleasant membership registration process and that the new system will undoubtedly help improve class registration and management. And if you haven’t already joined for the 2024 season, now is the time to sign up!

    Classes are open!

    Our 2024 class registration is open! Christopher Cryan (our Education Vice Commodore) has already sent out a notice to folks on the waiting list, and as of today, both beginner classes are already more than half full. So, if you’re interested in signing up (or have an interested friend), you should act quickly!

    2024 budget and event schedule

    We have a draft operating budget for 2024, and many thanks to our members who attended our budgeting work session and budget-themed board meeting. We’ll finalize the budget during our next board meeting, and in the meantime, I’ll email out a link to members so everybody can review the budget. If you’d like to comment on the budget, you can use our contact form. Select “Feedback or suggestion” in response to the “How can we help you?” question, and your comment will go straight to all ASC board members.

    The events calendar is also ready, and you can find it here:

    Events

    Spring work party

    The Spring Work Party is coming up on May 25th! I’ll send out a more detailed post about that soon. In the meantime, I wanted to ensure that everybody added the event to their calendars. The ASC is a volunteer organization with no paid staff, so we count on a big turnout for this event to get the club up and running for the season.

    US sailing insurance

    Climate-change-driven insurance rate increases are hitting everybody, and sailing clubs nationwide have seen tremendous rate hikes. (The ASC’s insurance costs increased significantly last year.)

    So I’m thrilled to report that our costs went down this year rather than up. This resulted from switching to a specialized sailing-club-specific insurance product that US Sailing offers. I wanted to express sincere gratitude to longtime ASC member Dave Johnson, who spearheaded this effort. The lower rates allow us to focus our limited budget on program, boat, and site spending.

    US sailing instructor course

    Speaking of US Sailing, we have an instructor flying up from the Lower 48 to teach a US Sailing Small Boat Instructor, Level 1 class. Many of the longtime ASC instructors will be taking this course.

    Farewell Google Groups

    Our new MembershipWorks system provides us with a simple way to send out email messages to our members. This feature duplicates the function of our venerable Google Groups system, so we plan to close the ASC Members Google Group shortly.

    (We will continue using Google Groups to organize the communication for all our working committees.)

    Hydroseeding and grounds work

    We’re planning to hydroseed the section of the club grounds disturbed by last fall’s French drain project by the hoist and trailered boat storage area. Once we have established grass, this club section should be dryer and more usable. But there will be some short-term inconveniences while the grass comes in, and stay tuned for more information on that front. (We’ve already moved our usual June Intro to Sailing class to July in an effort to reduce the traffic on the grass while it grows in.)