Wayne Balsiger

If you haven’t been talking up the CYC junior instructional program to your kids, your grand kids and your friends and their families, it isn’t too late. We have open slots in the program that starts on Wednesday, June 22, and we are looking to fill them and get Seattle’s only junior sailing school on salt water off to a good start.

Getting the school going has been an enormous and thus far successful effort for our club and its membership.

We have 16 brand new Optimist dinghies on brand new racks on a float next to our Shilshole Clubhouse. The boats were purchased through the generosity of our members, who ponied up more than $40,000 in donations.

We have haired two enthusiastic young instructors who will be leading the program.

Now, we need to fill it up, and we need your help to do that.

For information on the junior program and to register for classes for kids as young as 5, click here.

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Hats off to Haley Lhamon, the better half of former board member Rusty Lhamon, for organizing the Seattle Women’s sailing clinic Saturday, June 18, at Leschi. The clinic had 40 participants sailing in seven Thistles and two Flying Scots.

The weather wan’t the best, but the Women’s Racing clinic was a great success.

Haley ran a similar program two years ago in Snipes and plans to continue putting these clinics together every-other year. CYC and the Thistle fleet co-sponsored the clinic this year.

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The club had hoped to buy six double-handed boats to jump-start its young-adult program this year, but even though that purchase has been postponed, the group has been busy planning team racing events and a regatta, perhaps later this summer.

Rusty Lhamon and Julie Arsenault made a presentation to the board at its meeting June 13 on their efforts.

As is the case with our junior instructional program, we see this young-adult effort as a way encourage young people and families to join the club, participate in our many activities, and help offset our aging membership base.