Minutes from the Feb. 15, 2011, Y-Knot Board of Managers’ meeting minutes in Clifton Park are submitted for consideration as follows:
In attendance were Scott Stewart (Vice President), Keith Edwards (YMCA Camp Chingachgook liaison), Trish McCluskey, Spencer Raggio, Don Miller (Vice President), Mark Carnevale (President), and Dan Byrnes (Secretary).
Keith reported that we received a matching grant from GE for a donation that Herm Lintner gave Y-Knot last year. Y-Knot also received a $3,000 grant from the YMCA for its Reach Out for Youth activities.
Rick has new graphics for the boats we use, including No Limit.
Mark said he, George Painter (YMCA Camp Chingachgook Director), and Mike Peluso went to visit State Senator Betty Little about the $100,000 grant that expired last year. She was called away at the last minute for a meeting with the lieutenant governor, but they met with members of the Senator’s staff. They were sympathetic and said there may be an opportunity to restart the grant, but nothing specific was discussed.
Mark said only about 3 people have responded to the idea of holding a Chowder Fest or Cup, so the benefit of holding that in conjunction with a 15-year celebration might be kind of slim. Mark said the concept was to race at the camp and have the “lunch” right at the camp. The question was raised of whether we have enough water to allow for the draft of a J/22 or J/24.
Spencer commented that he thought the sailing crowd is sort of in the habit of signing up at the last minute and that he thought we’d get 15-20 boats if we held the Cup. In the past it’s been held in May. The Lake George Club doesn’t start up until the end of June, so there’s kind of excitement in May about having an event to open the season. A tentative date of May 21 was brought up, which would coincide with the first day of sailing for Y-Knot.
Curt Leatherbee sent a request asking for help promoting a disabled sailing regatta in Newport, RI, http://www.sailnewport.org/regattas/newportRegatta/, at the start of July. Keith and Mark said they could take two boats down each, for four boats. Accommodations in Newport … That would still leave two Martins and the Freedom (No Limit) for use at the camp by Y-Knot’s other program.
An April 2 winter get-together at the Diamond Eight in Latham is being considered as a combination chalk talk and social gathering, from Noon until 3:00. Mark will ask Rick if he’ll draw up a flyer to announce the event. Dan volunteered to do a short presentation on how to use our Y-Knot sailing days to practice for racing, and Spencer agreed to give a chalk talk on how to win sail race starts. Keith said he’ll bring a white board, easel and magnetic sailboat markers we can use for the discussion. The meeting will be open to the public, and we’ll promote it to the Google Groups general email mailing list Y-Knot maintains.
Spencer mentioned that Y-Knot now has a Facebook page and that he and Pierre Richard from Montreal both subscribed as friends.
Regarding sailing dates, Mark proposed moving our regatta from 9/10-11 to 9/17-18. That weekend though is the Alexanderson Cup, so it’s hard for us to move the event and find an open date before it gets cold in October. We plan to leave the event for 9/11-12.
The July 9 date will remain in the schedule, even though some of our most active sailors may be travelling with some of our boats to Newport, RI.
Regarding new business, Keith Edwards said he’d like to re-register all members of the Y-Knot mailing list. We want to look friendly and sending bulk emails out to people who don’t want to hear from us any more isn’t very friendly. Plus people’s email addresses change, and it’s hard for us to update the list. Spencer proposed replacing the Camp’s list with the Google Group’s list, where people can sign up and unsubscribe on their own. There are 160 people signed up at Google Groups. Spencer offered to merge anyone from the camp’s list into the Google Groups’ list.
Don said Susan Zebriski invited us back to Clayton for 2012 North Country Access.
None of us have heard anything from Nyack so it’s not clear that there’s going to be any event there this spring.
This year’s New York State Governor’s Expo for the Disabled was cancelled. We’re looking for other events to get the word out at.
Our next meeting will be March 15 at the Clifton Park Library.
Submitted March 15.