Board of Managers Meeting: March 2012

This entry was posted in Meeting Minutes on by

Minutes from the Mar. 20, 2012, Y-Knot Board of Managers’ meeting at the Southern Saratoga YMCA, Clifton Park, NY, are submitted for consideration as follows:

In attendance were Spencer Raggio, Don Miller (Vice President), Scott Stewart, Keith Edwards (YMCA Camp Chingachgook liaison), Mark Carnevale (President), George Malcolm and Dan Byrnes (Secretary).
Minutes from the Feb. 28 meeting were read and approved.

Last meeting, there was a question of why any income from two memorial funds we knew about last year didn’t appear in the Y-Knot income statement. Keith Edwards reported that he had an answer to that question. Monies from these funds were received, almost $3,000 total, and went directly to the new dock fund by request of the donors.

Y-Knot has no Fort Ticonderoga Race in schedule this year, just because it’s not a sailing day. If anyone wants to race, we can still make that happen, but we would have to get volunteers out to assist the sailors on a special basis.

The jib for No Limit is being built and should be here by the end of April. We are buying one sail this year and we will number it “012.” We will be able to use it on boat 12, conveniently enough, and next year we will buy another sail, give it number “013” and put it on boat 13.

Regarding companion seat bilge pumps, Keith has one in hand. He will install it on the boat work day and make a decision about rolling it out to the other 5 boats after that experience.

Regarding the Soling One Design opportunity from last meeting, Peter Meixner emailed about having Y-Knot Sailing visit on Friday, June 22. We would like to do something sooner than that. Mark will get in touch with Peter.

We’re interested in doing a social event this spring. Keith is going to look into whether we can do a dinner up at camp after Volunteer Training Day on May 12.

We realized that without Steve Fletcher on Volunteer Day this year, we won’t have the same staff to provide training this year. Don Miller said he may be able to fill in for Steve.

Keith said he was in touch with Pat Standen who has a 2.4 meter sailboat he would like to bring up some time this summer. He might be able to make it in late August. Mark got an email from Tim Ripley – we could have as many as 3 for a race. From our standpoint, it would be best to do this on a regular sailing day in the summer because of camp. Possible dates discussed were Tues., July 3; Sat., July 7; Sun., July 15; Tues., July 31; Sat., Aug. 11, and Sun., Sept. 16.

Mark plans to send around a letter to announce this year’s kick off of the season.

Mark said he will be making a presentation to a Spinal Bifida Society meeting in a few weeks at Bryant and Stratton College.

This summer, to promote racing, we’re going to drop a pair of marks every time out. Sailors can use them for practicing starting, mark roundings and other aspects of racing. On Sat May 19 – we will run a chalk talk at 11:00 A.M. and on the water coaching starting at 1:00 P.M. Dan volunteered to make the chalk talk happen.

Also Keith offered to have the camp help volunteers get involved with PV licensing. Don has his. He is going to look into getting more materials.

From the standpoint of Marketing, the Board discussed whether the “Accessible Sailing” positioning Y-Knot uses is the best, and whether we should adopt the phrase, “Adaptive Sailing,” which is used by other organizations that offer sailing opportunities to people with spinal cord injuries. Accessible Sailing covers a broader context in that Y-Knot makes sailing more accessible for lots of people, but it doesn’t tell the reader that you can get a disabled person into a boat. Y Knot is for more than wheel chair bound individuals, i.e., blind, MS. Spencer suggested that we have a web page that discusses our Adaptive Boats that may need to get spruced up a bit.

The next meeting will be May 15 at the Crossings, Colonie, NY.

Submitted by Dan Byrnes, August 21, 2012.