Wednesday, April 11, 2012


Fun racing and possible regatta

Jay's stock Victoria

The first of the Commodore's Sunday Series was held on Easter Sunday at Lake Riley in Cobbs Hill Park.

Beth, Jay, and I sailed and John Y. showed up briefly (more on that later).

We sailed Vics and Solings.

It was a beautiful sunny day and about 60 degrees.

The wind was strong with an occasional overpowering gust.

Some spectators asked good questions and one sailed my boat for a while.

We only finished three races but we got in lots of practice while one or the other of us was either adjusting or repairing our boats or talking to spectators.

It was lots of fun!

 

John Y. showed up with his brand new Chevy Volt.

He announced that he is going to host an AC regatta some unspecified weekend at Carey Lake in honor of Ray Davidson who died last year.

RAMYA would like to sponsor this race if John can get the planning end of it lined up – such as potential date and a list of volunteers (especially a race director, if John wants to race in the event). So those of you who are interested in helping John pull this off, please contact him. If he gets enough help to do this the club will act as sponsor.

I just searched the web to find out who Ray was. He was a very early member of AMYA ( #5) and belonged to the Metro Marine Modelers of Toronto.

Whoops … looks like that club has stolen John's thunder!

I found a NOR for an annual regatta starting this year that honors Ray Davidson – International One Meter regatta series.

Oh well, I guess there can't be too many memorials for Ray.

Oh, and by the way, John Yost has decided that he will run for RC Laser fleet captain, after all.

Walt Bankes

Friday, January 13, 2012

Website changes, etc.


January 13 (FRIDAY the 13th – eek!) 2012

Welcome to Rochester's first snowstorm of the year.
And welcome to the new RAMYA members:
Pete Royle
and
Kenny Fourspring;

As I sit here in the warmth of my house, putting off running the snow blower, I will use my energy, instead, on bringing y'all up to date about the RAMYA website. Ramyasailing.com

Over the past two years Beth has put lots of time and energy into shaping our website into a more professional looking display of our club activities. First she bought the web domain RAMYASAILING.COM and continues to pay for that subscription. Next she rented website space and website editing tools, to the tune of about $120 per year so that she could create and host the new site. She did a terrific job not only with the website creation but also gathered all of our unwritten rules and regulations and created a formal set of by-laws. (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FmsGvRz92yIxBlKnNgjkA1v7sNqgenOg1Ywn_GchIMk/edit?hl=en&authkey=CLKf3YoN)
I especially appreciate her efforts with the by-laws since it will make my job much easier. I expect that most issues that arise in the next two years will be resolved by someone just being able to refer the problem to a clause in the by-laws – how much more civilized can you get than that, eh? The most prominent feature of the by- laws, in my opinion is the statement of the following phrases: “civility”, “fair play and good fellowship”, “sportsmanship”, “fellowship and camaraderie” and “spirit of fairness and cooperation”. I believe that these phrases all spell out F U N ! I hope that everyone agrees with me.

Okay, back to the topic of the website.
Since Beth has stepped down, I have taken it upon myself to reduce her financial obligation by moving the website to a non-cost service. First I moved it back to my RIT domain. Then, to my amazement, I discovered that Google has changed its free web sites from what they used to call Google Pages ( a VERY low level service) to what they now call Google Sites. This service is almost as capable as the service that Beth was paying for ( she still pays for the domain name). So we now use Google Sites for our web service.

One page that Beth instituted, RULES, is a pretty good summary of the rules we follow locally. Many of you have sent links to me suggesting that I post similar rules from other clubs on our website. As I read through these they always include some of their local rule interpretations that don't agree with the practices within our club. Since there is so much interest in this, I think it would be a good idea for those who are interested to step forward and form a committee to arrive at a set of our local interpretations of the rules that may be used as a firm set to be enforced in RAMYA racing events.

The new structure of our website now contains areas that allow some members to make direct content contributions without going through me. So far we have RACING SCORES, PICTURES, BLOGS, and CALENDAR. Beth and Jay now have access to those features. Anyone else with a small amount of computer savvy can get the passwords to those sections to do posting, there. Fleet captains, please tell me what day of the week and time of the day you want your competition to be held. Or you may post it yourself if you want by getting the password from one of us to do that.

Oh yeah, while I am thinking about it, I ask all of you to be sure that the date and time are set correctly on your cameras. The reason for that is the program that files your pictures on my computer uses the date to keep track of the pictures. If the date is way off, the picture is essentially lost :( Some of the pictures I have now from all of you have bad dates on them. Of course you WIIL remember to make comments on all pictures – pictures without comments are booorrriiinnnnggg.
And last but not least – If you haven't paid your RAMYA dues yet please sent a check to Richard.


Walt

Saturday, December 31, 2011

Happy New Year from the RAMYA Commodore

Welcome to the new web blog for the Rochester Area Model Yachting Association.
I have been gathering notes on all of our business that I would like for us to work on this new year.

The list got very long in a short time. So I guess I will spring it on you little by little with a message, more or less, once every week.

The first item is, of course, is that it is time for us all to pay our annual dues - $20.
Please send your check to:

RAMYA
Richard Phelps, Treasurer
22 Stonefield Place 
Honeoye Falls, N.Y. 14472

If you are a new member print out the Membership Application form from our web site and include it with your payment.


Please put your AMYA member number on the check, if you are a member.
 There is a new requirement that 50% of our member be members of the AMYA in order for us to be able to buy pond insurance from them.


Also, if you are a member of the AMYA (recommended), it is almost time to pay that, too. I usually pay mine at the same time since I tend to forget.

My next message will be about the new website.

I hope all of you are having a good start to the new year.
Walt Bankes