Fire up for Commodore's Cup!

In the spirit of of the upcoming festivities, we offer an inside look at the club's rock stars, past and present: The 2009 instructor swimsuit calendar! Two thousand nine was the definitive year—a veritable who's who of the greatest sailing club stars of the past 15 years! Some of those pictured are still instructing, while others are (sob!) now gone.

Warning: some people you might not want to see half-naked are pictured with their shirts off. This is offset to a small degree by a few you'd like to see wearing even less....

You think we're joking about how super-cool HSC instructors are? The theme of this year's C-Cup is (again): We are better than you. That is, HSC instructors are better than you, because you suck. That's not me talking—it's the official Hoofer position, and it's even on some of the flyers.

For more on why HSC instructors are cooler than you, why it's great to be an instructor (if you can manage to get "hired"*), the numerous instructor perks, the club's cash flow, crimes that are being committed, and how it all works, check out some of our older posts.

Note that instructor swimsuit calendars are an instructor perk and are not available to general club members, so please don't share it with them. Unless they buy you a pitcher or two.

*HSC instructor hiring requirements: You must be good looking, super cool, and/or friends with the hiring committee members. Sailing and teaching experience not required.

Pirate's Day report

A week after "Pirate Day" 2016, the Jolly Roger is still flying above Hoofers. Apparently some people aren't sure whether or not the event actually happened yet (and maybe Hoofers is soliciting some real pirate action...)

If you missed PD '16, you didn't miss much. We had a watered down version of a treasure hunt race, union food afterwards, and a few people even dressed up in "pirate" outfits. You could also trek off to the hot, filthy under-construction Union and stand in line to buy beer.

It was nothing like the rollicking PD's of the past. A grand total of 55 people participated (much less than 10% of the club), and the festivities were over and most people long gone by 5 PM. No more raucous boardwalk party going into the night, no more slinging people off piers, no more boats going back out for skirmishes. Overall, a sad reflection of the great PD's of the past.

So what happened? New rules happened. Trying to cover their asses for past negligence--and probably upset that as Union managers they can't participate in the fun at Hoofers--Mark Guthier and other Union staff have worked to make it harder for the rest of us to have fun. New ad hoc rules including the prohibitions on alcohol are their method.

The lifejacket rule (if indeed it is still a rule) is also negligent. On PD, many people wore their lifejackets and risked heat stroke on the sunny, 90 degree, light-wind day in spite of the idiocy of doing so (non-swimmers excepted). As for the alcohol rule, it's easy enough to circumvent, but the overall restrictions including on land serve no purpose except to suffocate the social side of the club.

One can argue that people should be able to have fun without drinking, but then why doesn't Guthier prohibit alcohol at the Union altogether..? It's because that generates big revenue for the Union, and if Guthier did so, the Regents would fire him faster than they'd dig out an Indiana tick.

Instructor profile: Will Beatty

Will Beatty's Facebook page says that he's still an instructor, but all of his most recent lessons have er suddenly been cancelled. Is he still instructing..? And who's the J-fleet captain now? Inquiring minds want to know.

In Hoofers it's a mystery why instructors come and go, although hard partiers are preferred. Often the good ones seem to go and it's the jerks who stick around. Brains and teaching skill certainly aren't valued much. But it's difficult to provide details when administrators cover everything up. In general, people who look or act like they're hiding something are hiding something.

Maybe leaving the scene of an accident, operating an unregistered boat, and so on led someone to conclude that Will isn't responsible enough to be a Hoofer instructor. Oh wait... those are prerequisites to becoming a HSC instructor! No wonder Hoofers and the UW are so protectionist.

Predators and Prey.

*Predators and Prey is an ongoing series focusing on Hoofer Sailing Club "leaders". If you would like to be featured yourself--or if you'd like to see a particular person featured--request it in the comments!

The rape that wasn't

We held off on posting this because of some confusion caused by conflicting reports. Some of you may have heard about the supposed rape near Memorial Union earlier this month. That link describes the sexual assault but also says on the right: UW Police say there's no evidence the sex assault actually happened!

In the video, you can see police urging students to be wary as they walk home, not to walk alone, etc. This is part of UWPD's ongoing effort to create a climate of fear on campus. Of course they sent out a wiscalert to "warn" all UW students at the time. Giving UWPD even more incentive to prop up their own importance is criticism for recent and ongoing screw-ups, e.g. busting into a class to arrest someone--for grafitti.

The real problem is that police are habitual abusers. Many were bullied or abused as children, so in their adult lives, they are attracted to positions of authority by which they can finally control and abuse others. What kind of person would want a job that consists mainly of dealing with scum and writing up reports..? Damaged goods.

Like many Memorial Union employees, the "victim" here was apparently having a flashback or hallucination, or just lying. Other Memorial Union employees have falsely claimed to have been sexually assaulted in the past. This sort of thing is likely similar to what's going on with police: losers seeking attention.

That non-incident aside, there may have been an actual rape around the same time, as well as some hanky panky by a Hoofer employee in a separate incident. More on this soon.

WHY THE PACKERS SUCK

JAN 16 UPDATE: Tough loss for the Meat Packers today, but boy, that A-Rod sure can play. You heard it here first: The Packers will never make it to another Super Bowl with him at QB. C'est la vie.

JAN 6 UPDATE: As expected, the Pack lost to Minnesota on Sunday. At least the Packers have lots of great fans, like those at right. Let's hope for more good news next Sunday in Washington, DC. (And we'll get back to sailing soon!)

Happy New Year and welcome to another non-sailing post. It's January so there's no sailing in Wisconsin these days. Nor do we care about the boys arguing over their toys every other Wednesday evening in the Hoofer lounge. Does it really matter whether the club accepts that poor sap's beat-up Laser or some other junk?

Meanwhile, with the Vikings-Packers divisional championship game looming this Sunday, we thought it appropriate to recall why the Packers suck so much:

1. Brett Favre is gone.

2. Aaron Rodgers, nickname "A-Rod" (you know what the "A" and the rod stand for, right..?) is a jerk. Plus, he looks like a poor-man's Ben Roethlisberger. Rodgers has some talent to be sure, but much of his skill and success owe to the fact that he got to observe Hall of Fame QB Brett Favre play for three years.

3. Green Bay is friggin cold. Like Siberia, but without the gulags.

4. Wisconsin is the West Virginia of the Midwest. For instance, most residents believe that the Earth popped out of hyperspace about 8,000 years ago fully populated with modern humans. That's what happens when you drop out of high school at age 21 and take a job in your family's auto salvage business. Naturally, most of them also believe wholeheartedly in the Packers.

5. The team's name is a salute to meat packing (i.e. the Meat Packers, but they dropped "meat" for some reason). Meat packing is big industry in Green Bay and elsewhere in Wisconsin. That, toilet paper production, and auto salvage (because so much salt is used on the roads here in winter).

And people wonder why the high tech industry struggles in Wisconsin.

Well, be sure to see the movie "Concussion." Football—it's "America's game"! (and especially Wisconsin's)

We'll try to bring you some ice sailing news if and when the lake freezes over.

Buck, Buck

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! There's not much sailing news, but people have been contacting us with specific questions.

While we are always happy to receive useful info from sources (and are appreciative of it), we generally don't reply directly to questions via email.

However, to answer three recent questions.... One, we have not received any further details yet on the child/sexual harassment complaint alluded to in recent comments, but we are hopeful that details will be forthcoming.

Two, the only HSC rule covering swimming off boats is on p. 18 in the Ground school manual, which states that you must wear a lifejacket at all times unless you're "Hoofer swimmer rated" (although I've never even heard of that rule being enforced). Of course, you should still get the skipper's permission before jumping in. NOTE that the rule was changed after the June 2015 drowning to require all sailors to wear their lifejacket at all times, in a classic knee-jerk reaction.

And three, no we do not accept or solicit monetary contributions for this blog. (was that person really serious?)

Meanwhile, I assume everyone is eating something other than turkey this Thanksgiving given the tens of millions of deaths from the H5N2 bird flu virus in the U.S. this year and widespread infection of the remaining fleet, er flock....