Our sailing season is coming to an end at CLSA, but we hope you'll consider continuing your training and develop during the offseason. Here are some options: 

1. US Sailing Basic Race Management Seminar. Race committee training is offered through US Sailing via Zoom. The seminar consists of three 2.5-hour Zoom sessions. Course fee $40. Seminars start Nov. 7 and Dec. 5 and are expected to be offered throughout the winter months. 

2. Mid Illini Classes. The Mid Illini Sail and Power Squadron offers in-person classes. Fall class offerings include Weather and Boat Handling. Course fee is $165 for non-members (includes a single membership fee).  Fall classes started Sept. 26 and more spring classes will be announced. Keep watching their webpage.  

3. America's Boating Club Online Learning. America's Boating Club offers a great selection of online boating courses. Learn at your own pace. 

4. Backyard Meteorology. A self-paced online learning weather course offered through Harvard University. This course is free to audit for 30 days and the fee is $99 if you would like to continue.  

5. US Sailing Certification Courses and ASA Certification Courses offer hands-on training and are offered through certified sailing schools. Several CLSA members have earned keelboat certifications and recommend them.  

6. Performance Race Week in Florida. If you like sailboat racing and are looking to indulge in a sailing getaway, consider Performance Race Week at the Offshore Sailing School. Performance Race Week® 2022 will be held Jan. 30 -- Feb. 4, with an exciting new team of Sail-Race Experts. You and your crewmates spend each day learning tactics, tweaking your sails and crew for efficient racing on all points of sail, practicing many starts, and pushing hard to get to the first mark, and the finish line in a regatta on the last day!

CLSA members:

Please visit our website at clsasailing.org and check out the information under our new tab "GET INVOLVED" on our homepage. You will find opportunities to volunteer and share your talents or skills with CLSA for ongoing projects that make our club better.

Contact clintonlakesailing@gmail.com if you'd like to help with a project or committee described below.

Current Projects

Rigging area drainage: to address ongoing pooling of water.

Shoreline committee: to help oversee and provide input as to how to best manage our shoreline by preserving and preventing erosion while maintaining its beauty.

Signage for our docks and shoreline: contribute toward designing our signage at each end of dock and along shoreline to communicate and represent our club to visitors.

Master plan committee: to determine what our club goals are and how we will achieve them over the next five years.

Insurance committee: help our membership determine how to manage our insurance responsibilities.

Dredging committee: Our cove was last dredged in 2011 and is long overdue for another as our cove gets more shallow.

Volunteers are still needed for our Glow regatta this weekend, Oct. 1-2. Also, our fall banquet is Nov. 13, and our board of directors is seeking people interested in leadership roles as vice commodore, social chair, membership chair, race committee chair and publicity chair. If you are interested or would like to nominate someone, please contact us today!

Fair winds,

Commodore Paul

Join us as we remember Craig and celebrate all the love he brought into our lives!

Save the date:

When: Sat., Nov. 5, 4:30-8:30 p.m.

Where: Siebel Center for Design, 1208 S. Fourth St., Champaign

Hosted by the Rost family, 217-493-1332

Event schedule:

4 p.m.: Fourth Street doors (west side) open

4:30-5:30 p.m.: Informal meet-and-greet with the family at the Fourth Street doors; tour the Siebel Center

5:30-6:30 p.m.: Reflections about Craig

6:30-8:30 p.m.: Dance and laugh together to Le Travaillant, a Cajun zydeco band

Casual dress

Wine, beer and soft drinks served with fun and COVID-friendly food from 6:30-8:30 p.m.

Heads up! This is an Illinois game day and the game time has not yet been announced. Please plan ahead to carpool, ride your bike, walk or be dropped off.

Feel free to come for all or part of this celebration of Craig's life. Please RSVP so the family can plan for food, seating, etc.

If you are at the lake and take a picture worth sharing on our Facebook page, please email the picture to clintonlakesailing@gmail.com. We are a very active sailing club and showing different aspects of the club from more vantage points is what we want to do. Thank you to members and guests who have submitted pictures for our social media posts!    

It's been a great season so far, and we are asking for your support to ensure we finish strong! We have a number of fun volunteer opportunities and we appreciate your help. If you are interested in any of the following volunteer openings, please email us at clintonlakesailing@gmail.com. 

1. Lawn Mowing: Weeks of Sept. 5, Sept. 12, Oct. 3, Oct. 10, Oct. 17, Oct. 24. Volunteers help save our club $300 each mow, and that money helps pay for docks and other capital improvements. You'll coordinate with Harbormaster Tim and help keep our property looking warm and inviting.    

2. Trimming Party: Saturday, Sept. 24 at 9:30 a.m. Bring your string trimmer or weed whacker and help us clean up under the sailboats. We need to do this a couple of times per year to keep our property looking respectable. Tim Montague has volunteered to be team captain for this effort. Pizza will be provided for lunch.  

3. Social Committee: Flying Scot Glow Regatta Sept. 30 – Oct. 2. We're expecting 40 boats and it's going to be a huge party, with guests coming from all over the country! You'll work with Jodi Heckel and help with food setup and distribution and show guests what CLSA hospitality is all about. Volunteers enjoy free food (steak dinner) and beverages all weekend.  

4. Race Committee: Thistle Painkiller Regatta Sept. 10 – 11, Vicki Cup Sept. 24 – 25, Flying Scot Glow Regatta Sept. 30 – Oct. 2. Enjoy front row seats to the racing action! No racing experience is necessary. Race Committee Chair Chales Suggs is looking to fill some race committee openings so let us know if you are interested in watching some exciting racing. Glow and Painkiller volunteers enjoy free food (steak or veggie dinner) all weekend long.

5. Photographers/Drone Operators: Thistle Painkiller Regatta Sept. 10 – 11, Flying Scot Glow Regatta Oct. 1 – 2. We are looking for photographers and drone operators to capture racing footage. Our regatta chairs (Gerry and Eric) will follow up and help coordinate. 

This racing season CLSA's race committee chair, Charles Suggs, will be keeping tallies of finishes for our club races and will award trophies based on these tallies at the Fall Banquet. We have 11 races remaining on this year's calendar that qualify for season awards, including today's Thistle Sponsored Open Racing. Charles will track one design standings and, for mixed fleet races, Portsmouth Handicap scores.

Come out and race with us this season and vie for some trophies!

A link to the Notice of Race for the 2022 season can also be found at the top of the Racing page. CLSA aims to have the season's standings to-date posted this week, which you'll be able to find by clicking Racing Results at the top of the Racing page, and will update them as the season progresses.

If you still haven't signed up for a race committee volunteer shift, get in touch. Volunteering for race committee is a great way to learn about race management and we'll make it easy and fun. We can't race without race committee.

Good luck, sail fast, hike hard, and have fun

We have 4 races coming up in June for which we still have opportunities to serve on the race committee. It's fun and easy, and we'll make sure you have what you need and are paired with someone experienced. If there's a race you don't plan to sail in, please consider joining the race committee for that race.

Sign up soon and choose which weekend this year you do your race committee shift.

These are the June dates, with open positions listed. There are still open shifts for later this season too, so get in touch!

• 6/5 — Thistle Club Racing (3 open positions)
  - 2 boat operators and 1 deck hand
  
  
• 6/12 — Thistle Club Racing (4 open positions)
  - 2 boat operators
  - 2 deck hands
  - 1 PRO (a boat operator or deck hand can be the PRO)
  

• 6/18 — Flying Scot Club Racing (3 open positions)
  - 1 boat operator
  - 2 deck hands
  - 1 PRO (a boat operator or deck hand can be the PRO)
  
  
• 6/25 - 6/26 — Thistle Hike Out Regatta (6 open positions)
  - 3 boat operators
  - 3 deck hands
  - 1 PRO (a boat operator or deck hand can be the PRO)

Thanks,

Charles Suggs, CLSA Race Committee Chair

We are seeking volunteers for our Small Boat Introduction to Sailing Classes, Parent Child Class, and Youth Sailing Camp. 

Click on event links to register. Members, click on links and log in to register to volunteer.  

June 6 - 21 - Small Boat Introduction to Sailing 

Monday and Tuesday Evenings  

June 11 - Parent Child Class

Saturday Morning and Afternoon Sessions

July 18 - Aug 2 - Small Boat Introduction to Sailing

Monday and Tuesday Evenings

July 23 - Youth Sailing Camp

Saturday Morning and Afternoon Sessions

When: Saturday, June 4, 12-3 p.m.

Where: Clinton Lake Sailing Association

RSVP for Free Boat Rides: https://clsa.as.me/openhouse

Rides available at 12 p.m., 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. time slots.   

Free hotdogs and snacks served from 12-3 p.m.  

Kids are welcome; however each boat is limited to two kids per boat.  

Please invite your friends, neighbors, co-workers and social media contacts.  

After reading this article, please take a few minutes to log in to Wild Apricot to update your group participation and subscribe to group forums. We may have added new groups and forums since you last updated your profile.   

Your group participation settings control, for the most part, which emails you receive from CLSA. If you subscribe to a group, you will receive event invites to sailing, education, and volunteer opportunities. Subscribing to a group also allows you to post and reply to topics in group-specific forums.  

If you subscribe to a forum, you will receive notifications when someone posts or replies to any topic in that forum. You can further update your communication preference for that forum to receive notifications immediately or in digest form daily or weekly. You may also subscribe to any individual topic in any forum and select your notification preferences for that particular topic.   

If you do nothing, we still have you covered. Our club communication director will send periodic summary emails to all members that highlight upcoming events, announcements, forum activity, and classifieds activity. We will also send invites to all members for banquets and major social events. Our calendar is always accessible on our website with convenient signup links.   

Wild Apricot is a powerful tool that allows members more control over your email inbox preferences. This is a new system, so we’re going overboard to get everyone on board. Spending a few minutes to get oriented will help ensure you receive communications that are relevant to you.    

Communication Groups

Forums

1. CLSA Open Forum 

2. Cabin Boat Crewing and Connection and Trips Forum 

3. Cabin Boat Activities at Clinton Lake Forum 

4. Cabin Boat General Forum

5. Cabin Boat Maintenance Forum 

6. Flying Scot Forum 

7. Laser & Sunfish Forum 

8. Thistle Forum 

9. Windsurf and Kiteboard Forum 

Update Profile 

To log in to Wild Apricot and access your profile, click on the avatar icon in the upper right hand side of the homepage at CLSASailing.Org.   

After you are logged in, click on View profile. 

After clicking on View Profile, click the Edit Profile button.

After click on edit profile, add an avatar (picture) and select the groups you want to join.

Don’t forget to click save.  

Subscribe to a Forum

To access a forum, visit the Forum page to access the CLSA Open Forum or visit the Fleet & Groups page/subpages to find fleet and group-specific forums embedded in those fleet/group pages.   

To subscribe to a forum, simply click ‘Subscribe to forum’ within the forum.   

When you subscribe to a forum, you will receive a daily digest email whenever someone posts/replies to a topic. You can confirm your subscriptions by looking at your profile. If you would like to receive weekly digest emails or get immediate notifications, you can edit your profile by clicking on the edit profile button within your profile and selecting ‘email subscriptions’.   

Please contact Membership Chair Eric Bussell if you would need assistance with anything relating to our Wild Apricot membership software. Click here for a complete guide on how to use Wild Apricot.