Commodore Wayne Balsiger announces award for Derek Storm.

Derek Storm, the club’s longtime webmaster who spent many hours each week ensuring that members received timely and accurate information, is CYC’s newest honorary life member.

The honorary life membership, the club’s highest honor, was awarded to Storm by unanimous vote of the board of directors and was announced at the club annual meeting on Nov. 28 at Shilshole.

Under the club bylaws, there can be no more than 10 honorary life members at any time. Storm joins the likes of George Trusk, Jim Miller, Bill Buchan and deceased honorees Hans Otto Giese and Eustace (Sunny) Vynne, Jr.

“Don’t expect me to be nice now,” Storm, in his typical curmudgeonly fashion, said after his award was announced by Commodore Wayne Balsiger and Staff Commodore Joe James.

James gave a summary of Storm’s sailing background and his work on the website, noting that then-commodore Bo Nanna started calling Storm webmaster in 1997.

“Derek learned websites as sort of a hobby,” James said. “He got books and studied other sites for good ideas. He would spend hours working on the site. Two to four hours, five or six times a week – Nearly every evening and on weekends.

“Derek had strong opinions about two aspects of the site: 1.) Race Results should be timely, posted within hours of the race finish and, 2.) that the page would load quickly . . . Derek didn’t care if the website was flashy but wanted the information to be quick to access, always up-to-date, and to allow people to quickly get the most frequently desired information.”

Storm started sailing and racing at age 4. At Princeton, he was on the sailing team and earned a letter.

The first boat he owned was a Santana 27 named Rag Doll, and he has been racing the J/30 Outlaw with his wife, Staff Commodore Cindy Gossett, since 1991.

Storm is a retired University of Washington physics professor.