Hoofers: Gangrene setting in

In recent months, I've heard from a number of people how great the sailing club is these days. The Badger Sloops are great! The instructors are great! The food is great! (uttered by a homeless person at a Friday social). The Techs are great! (that's actually true)

So just how great is it?

☉ The club is as xenophobic as ever. Still all white, still a feeding frenzy for paid positions (see screen capt), still slandering people as a way of asserting dominance. If you haven't heard any slander, it's because you don't rate the latest gossip, or maybe you didn't realize it was slander.

☉ We're treated like 5-year olds and ordered to wear our lifejackets. This is to teach us that it was very naughty of a Hoofer Sailing instructor to cause the drowning of a student in 2015. It's not that big a deal for us as instructors, but you feel for the general club members who have to share smelly old lifejackets every day.

☉ No more beer on the keelboats, not even with other consenting adults, some of whom are old enough to be your grandpa. All because a few drunkards took it too far and crossed the line. Well, and killed a couple of people.

☉ And (drumroll please)... The club's most experienced sailors managed to sink Sassafras a few weeks ago, one of the club's Tartan-10's (photo to right). Never checked the thru-hull fittings. Hence no surprise that the first storm that comes along sinks the boat, which may be a total loss due to water damage. We fragged Sassy's ass!

Hey Chicago, we need more keelboat donations again!

Hoofers' regular periodic conversion of keelboats into insurance money is so alarming that the original donor of Spray gave $5000 to the club so we wouldn't cash Spray in too! I think that's a first.

Overall, HSC is like a leg that has turned gangrene, then gets sprinkled with perfume and wrapped in a flowered sheet. Sorry, but that won't save the leg. One thing that's particularly nauseating to me personally is the mock seriousness at BOC meetings as young minds are schooled in the art of the steal.

Most of the old crowd is gone, but the ex-Advoosigator still lingers, attached to HSC like a 60-year old lamprey to a dying balleen whale, eager at the Youth program's return, and slandering those who done him wrong. He still likes to slip in a Mickey (figuratively speaking) with club leaders every once in awhile too, so watch out. A certain ex-commodore ambles by every so often in his button-down and baseball cap, seemingly lost. It's almost as if he doesn't recognize Hoofers anymore. Where's the beer? A few others from the good ol' days also resurface periodically.

There are some good people, of course, but they're trapped between the status (and cash) they enjoy as instructors or BOC and an urge to run screaming from this place. Most of the traditions are long gone. Mooning the Betty Lou horrified Union managers because it caused them to imagine dropping their own drawers, which would expose their tiny [CENSORED] and fat [CENSORED]. Since they never got a bid to join a frat and had to live in the dorms for four years (many years ago), they never learned how to have fun.

The good vibes are all gone, the whole renovation a farce. Thank you, Mr. Guthier, and Welcome To The New Hoofers! Where safety comes first, followed by sobriety, surveillance, and sycophancy.

And Shivjit. Apparently he is still doing keelboat lessons? OMG he is so clueless. He should have to re-certify his own skipper rating before being allowed to "teach" any more lessons.