Idle hands

Big news at last night's BOC meeting. Unfortunately, we can't pass along the details, at least not yet, because they involve libel, slander, and other criminal acts by current BOC members (other than me and my co-author, of course). Suffice it to say that there are going to be some very unhappy campers. Stay tuned.

And always remember: Idle hands are the Devil's plaything!

What does that make idle minds..?

The octopussy

People are still needed for the keelboat work party this Saturday! We have to get things squared away out there asap. Details are here:

https://lessons.hoofersailing.org/event/59008

The end of the season is always a sad time, but with enough people we can get this done in a couple of hours and then go grab some food. Or go sailing--the forecast for Sat/Sun is looking pretty nice.

Remember, "Many fingers, er, thar she blows, er, many hands make light work! (Sorry, I am preoccupied with Donald Trump.)

Try not to run anyone over in your rush to sign up.

For Instructors only

Extra lessons are now available, taught by HOI Dave Elsmo.

Tonight is "Rig tuning" (6 PM on the lakefront) for those who want to learn how to maximize a boat's power and win races. This lesson will cover stay tension, car positioning, halyard tension, weight placement, etc. This is only open to instructors (because most of them don't already know that stuff?).

General club members aren't expected to win races, so they are not eligible to take this class. Of course, they're not eligible for a lot of other instructor goodies, either.... General (i.e. paying) club members are mainly around to provide cash for the instructors.

Next Tues Aug 23 will be "Sail Trim". In this lesson we'll cover proper sail trim for all conditions at all points of sail. Again, not open to paying club members.

Huh. I actually teach all this stuff myself from time to time on the keelboats, as do some of the other KB instructors, so why aren't these lessons open to any Hoofer Sailing Club member..? They're not even full (as of the time of this post), and general club members are the ones who pay Elsmo's salary. Evidently he thinks it makes more sense for him to teach it to the "instructors", and then they can try to pass some of it on to the plebes.

C-Cup Report '16

Many thanks to Jo, Steve, and everyone else for a great party yesterday, and a big hug goes out to Justin for all his help :) To those who though it was too warm upstairs at CK, you should have had more to drink stood under the A/C! But Church Key was not a bad place for the ball, once in a blue moon.

Some pics are posted here (you may have to be logged in to see all of them). We love the composition in the photo at right. Chugging champagne with scantily clad gals (and guys)--who said Hoofers isn't great?

Hopefully everyone has recovered by now, or will by the time you have to terach tomorrow. Pizza was a great idea, too.

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.