On behalf of the members of the University of Chicago Sailing Club and our racing team, I'd like to express a warm welcome to our afterguard, past UofC alumni, and wellwishers. We hope that each and every one of you is as excited as we are about the past, present and future of this organization and our goal to promote opportunities for recreational, competitive, and instructional sailing at the University of Chicago.
My name is Adrian Cook and I am now a fourth-year undergraduate. In the past four years, I have served as our first fully qualified instructor, as Vice-Commodore, as Captain and most recently as Commodore. I'm proud to say that we've managed to build a remarkably strong organization in such a short amount of time.
Let me talk a little about our history. This club has existed intermittently since 1977. Most recently, it went through some tough times in the early 1990s but was restarted in 2001 by Matthew Wurtzebach (Class of '03). Our first practices in 2001-2002 were tenative and organized largely by individuals who rode bikes, took buses, and even walked to Jackson Park Yacht Club just to get a chance to sail our four rickety FJs on Saturday mornings. In 2002-2003, we began to compete in the Midwest Collegiate Sailing Association for the first time in nearly a decade and won our first MCSA regatta ever.
As a student-run organization, we have been conducting instructional sailing clinics at Columbia Yacht Club in the fall and spring on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays throughout the season in their 14 excellent 420s. Our team is co-ed and brings together individuals from both the University of Chicago undergraduate and graduate communities - the vast majority of whom are novices.
Our motto, 'smarter on the water', pays tribute to our college's legacy of encouraging the life of the mind. Since sailing is one of the most cerebral sports out there, our members are both physically fit enough and ideally placed to stack up against our competition.
Thanks to the support we have received from Columbia Yacht Club and the University of Chicago Sports Club Committee – we are achieving ever greater progress in terms of our fundraising and recruiting efforts. We are constantly building on our success through our Midwest Collegiate Sailing Association (MCSA) regattas.
One of our key priorities is to create a capital fund to pay for the costs of buying new equipment. This will help us keep our sailors warm and safe on the water. To ensure that costs are no obstacle to our members who are willing to learn and compete, so contact one of our officers to see how you can help!
Sail hard and sail fast,
Adrian Cook, Commodore 2005-2006 (acook@uchicago.edu)