MITNA Exec Meeting

Tuesday August 22, 2006 @ 17:30

Notes by:Iason Hatzakis

MITNA Execs present: Dwight Brown, Emi Giacometti, Eric Gibber, Patrick Lam, Iason Hatzakis

2005-2006 year review

Learn-to-Sail

In general there was a slight drop in attendance. There was also a shift of trainees from Sunday to the Wednesday classes. Other than that, the Learn-to-Sail classes were productive and helpful, and as always, the volunteer instructors' work was invaluable.

Summer weekday scheduled racing activities

A very positive feedback was given on the weekday racing activities, such as the Learn-to-Race on Monday nights and the Intermediate Tech racing on Thursdays. Apart from being a lot of fun, these activities are very important in taking intermediate sailors to a higher skill level and at the same time motivating them to practice. The Monday night series was taught by Fran Charles and volunteer instructors from the Tuesday night (Monday night in the Fall and Spring) fleet such as Russell Robinson who shared their experience in tactics, sail trim, boat handling and tuning. Matt Cohen, one of our new team coaches, taught the last class.

Racing in France

The X-HEC race (May 2006) was a good experience for those who participated, and hopefully it will happen again next year. One issue is that a large number of interested participants were not able to go; a possible solution would be to raise some funding from our side and have a second MIT boat take part. The cost for each boat is in the order of $4,000.

Change in the MITNA Constitution

It was proposed to change the reference 'student' to 'MIT student' in the Constitution in order to avoid misunderstandings.

Other topics

Other topics that were discussed include

• The lack of an offshore boat (the 30' Tartan in Maine probably remains the only current opportunity).
• The working hours of the pavilion: the shorter working hours imposed this year may have resulted in a slight decline of interest in sailing from the MIT and Alum community.

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