Dear CYC Friends, The days are slowly getting longer, and we're looking forward to seeing you this summer on Cuttyhunk! While the fleet is taking its winter rest, your Officers and Governors have been hard at work preparing for CYC's 2009 season. This letter comes to you a few months before our regular Spring Newsletter, as we have some exciting news to share about changes to the annual CYC membership and sailing school registration. Beginning now, you can sign up as new or renewing members, register your children for sailing class, or make a tax-deductible donation to CYC using the Internet! We'll explain how to do so below. Looking ahead to the Summer, we once again have hired a great group of instructors, all of whom are veteran CYC sailors. We are pleased to announce that Ellis Lehner will be joining us as Head Instructor. Beau Monast has accepted our offer to be Second Instructor. They will be joined by Third Instructors Lucy Garfield, Katie Lovell, and Doug Newkirk. Again this year, we expect several current and former A Groupers to help out as Junior Instructors at peak times, a continuation of a fine tradition and a great way for them to hone their teaching skills. I would also like to announce that the following members were elected to the CYC Board of Governors at the Annual Meeting in August: Cleve Heath, Kathleen Patton, and Nancy Wilder. Hal Granger was also re-elected to the Board for a second three-year term. We look forward to their support and ideas in the coming years! We are also pleased that Julie Mason, last year's Rear Commodore, has assumed the duties of Vice Commodore, and Treasurer David Frothingham has agreed to join the Commodore team as Rear Commodore. Cathy Broderick has graciously agreed to assume management of the ever-popular CYC Boutique. RENEW YOUR CYC MEMBERSHIP AND REGISTER FOR SAILING CLASS NOW! Thanks to the tireless efforts of Hal Granger, David Frothingham, Brian Broderick and Steve Garfield, you can now join CYC, register your children for sailing classes, and make a donation to CYC on the web! Simply click on the "RENEW YOUR CYC MEMBERSHIP" link below, and follow the instructions. To ensure that your family is listed in the 2009 Directory, please join CYC and pay your dues before June 1. Membership dues remain unchanged at $50 per year. We invite those aged 21-30 to join as Associate Members at the reduced annual dues rate of $20. Registration fees also remain unchanged from last year at $60 per child per week, if paid before June 1. After June 1, fees increase to $70 per child per week. Please keep in mind that sailing classes, especially in July, fill up fast! RENEW YOUR CYC MEMBERSHIP! At their November meeting, the CYC Board of Governors voted that any request for a waiver of sailing registration fees by a member family would be considered for reasons of economic hardship. Any fee waiver request should be addressed to the Commodore, who will then present the matter to the Governors for consideration. We hope that this process will be much easier for you, and that it will ease the heavy administrative burden on our very dedicated Treasurer, David L. Frothingham. A word about security: CYC will not have access to your credit card information. Any credit card payments you make will be processed by PayPal, an EBay company that is a nationally-recognized leader in secure electronic payment processing. Also, your personal information which you supply to us for publication in the CYC directory will be transmitted and received over the Internet via a secure link to a password-protected CYC database. Finally, for privacy reasons, the medical release forms which are required before your child can attend sailing class must be completed, signed, and sent to our Treasurer via US mail. If you happen to know a CYC member who does not have ready access to the Internet, please let us know via the Contact Us page on the CYC website so that we can contact them to make other arrangements for them to join and register this year. More than 60% of our members have graciously joined each year without enrolling a student, and have thereby provided crucial support for the program. Collectively these memberships allow us to remain open each season. We do not assume that you will join every year, and are truly grateful when you do. CLICK HERE TO SEE THE CYC 2009 SCHEDULE Our nine week season begins June 22nd and ends Friday August 21st. For more 2009 season details, please click on the link above. Save The Date! Work Weekend will take place on June 13-14, and we welcome everyone to join us to prepare the Clubhouse and fleet for the summer. It's always a fun and productive occasion! To see what a good time we all had last year, visit the CYC website home page and click on the link to the 2008 Work Weekend slide show!

Rounding the mark during the regatta with Ida Lewis YC (Ben Walker)

PIRATE DAY! (Mary Robins)

Wednesday Family Racing--Hiking to Windward (and Leeward!) (Kirk Phelps)

B Group surfs while A Group races during Tiverton regatta (Cate Zolkos)

In closing, we have many members to thank for their assistance last year. As you all know, Cuttyhunk Yacht Club is a volunteer-managed organization rich in the tradition of teaching children how to sail in a safe and fun way on the waters of Buzzards Bay. Our members who volunteer at Work Weekends, in the Boutique, at the July and August parties, and in the off-season help to ensure that Cuttyhunk's children will have the opportunity to enjoy sailing and the lifelong friendships made at CYC just as so many of us have over the years. If you shared your time with us last season, we greatly appreciate your efforts.

A number of members were extremely helpful to CYC last fall in volunteering with the final season-closing details after most of us (myself included) had left the island. Thanks to the Lehners and Monasts for hauling and storing the motor boats, to David Frothingham Sr. for his power washer and help with the N-10 mooring lines, and to Wyatt, Seth, and Angus Garfield for winterization of the dock and floats.

Charlie Lovell and Brian Broderick have each been enormously helpful to me and to the Governors in lending their legal expertise to ensure that CYC's governance structure is up to current standards.

We want to thank our outgoing governors, Andy Elmore, David Frothingham, and Wyatt Garfield, whose terms ended in 2008. Thanks also to Zoe Billman, who for several years managed and stocked the CYC Boutique with tasteful and popular merchandise. We are grateful to each of them for their enthusiasm and for their very significant contributions of time and talent.

We appreciate the efforts of our Membership Secretary, Spence Hobbs, who has seen to it that hundreds of letters of thanks for donations and membership are sent to our members each year.

I would like to thank recent Former Commodores Wyatt Garfield, Steve Garfield, John Tabor, and Doug Billman for the historical knowledge of Club operations which they have shared. Thanks as well to Steve for continuing to lead the annual production of the cherished CYC Directory.

Following years as a CYC Governor, Ben Walker, our Director of Inter-Club Racing, continued to re-energize the competitive and fun-loving spirit among us by enthusiastically organizing a number of very successful regattas. We wish him comfort as he bravely faces health challenges, and want everyone to know that we are planning more races with our mainland friends again this year.

Finally, I would like to extend appreciation to Angus Garfield, who, for the last two years, served as Commodore with great energy, dedication and competence. He did much to upgrade the fleet, and Julie Mason, David Frothingham, Charlie Lovell, and I thoroughly enjoyed working with him on the CYC Officer team.

Stay tuned for our regular Spring Newsletter with more exciting information about the upcoming season. If you have news you would like to share in that Newsletter, please email it to us by May 1 via the Contact Us page on CYC's website at http://www.cuttyhunkyachtclub.org/contactus.html.


See you all on the island, and thanks for your support!

Cordially,
Alison Granger
Commodore
CYC