The End is near

OCT 31 UPDATE: It's lucky lift-out wasn't postponed another week. I seem to recall it being as late as Oct 31 in the past. Usually there is windsurfing and racing team practice until the end of October, even into November sometimes. Basically, right up until pier-out. The normal average high for October in Madison is 60°, with the normal high for today's date at 53, normal low 37. The high today was 32°, with 4" of snow falling over the past 24 hrs. This is well outside two standard deviations from the norm--near record-low temps. Monday night's storm blew away the old record for snowfall--not just for the date but for all of October, and today's more than doubled that. If you didn't already hate Wisconsin,... see map above.

As another sailing season winds down and school takes over again, we can't abandon the lakefront quite yet. The big boats still have to be cleaned, prep'd, derigged, and lifted out this Saturday Oct. 26, and then winterized for storage. Like a typical keelboat cruise, most of the work comes at the very end.

If you find that at all depressing, a lot about the club is depressing these days. The new piers, the federal-penitentiary-style concrete-block hallways, the blanket surveillance, the locked doors with controlled access, the total prohibition on beer aboard the big boats (wink, wink), the seething discrimination, etc. There were some good comments on a lot of this on a recent Facebook post.

And how about those two chairs from the old Hoofer lounge, now stuck in the hallway like some sort of half-assed museum pieces--with surveillance cameras directly overhead!

If it all has you teetering on the edge, you can get free mental health care at UHS if you're a student (others are outta luck). Please do get help before committing social faux pas like libel, slander, false police reports, inappropriate touching, and so on. These are all ongoing problems in Hoofer Sailing, especially with staff, but counseling may be all that is needed. Hey, at least no one is stealing outboard motors anymore! (Did they ever?) In a police state, theft generally isn't a problem, but things like libel and slander that are harder to spot persist and flourish.

If you choose to seek help, contrary to what you might assume you'll impress friends and colleagues alike with your strength and maturity. There's a 94% chance they'll think more highly of you for it^†.

As for the piers, I personally had more than one person tell me this summer that they didn't quite feel safe--wet, slippery, sloping surfaces bouncing up and down in the waves, with nothing to grab on to. In all fairness, they don't bounce as much as I thought they would, but the old piers were level and had posts every 15 feet or so (also great for tying up keelboats). Now all we have are cleats at toe level. Maybe over the long winter, someone can dig up stats on how many individuals went into the water unintentionally this summer...

†According to UHS promotional flyers.