Hoofer Sailing Club busy out at “The Farm”
A letter from the Vice Comodore –
Hello from the Hoofer Sailing Club! While it might seem like the Sailing Club would be slow during the winter, it’s just a matter of looking in the right places to find the action. Sailors are dedicating many hours out at a place we fondly call “The Farm,” working on repairing our J- and keelboat fleet so they will be ready for the upcoming season.
The Farm actually is a real farm. A former Hoofer member is director of the UW Agriculture research farm and allows us to rent out space in the barn to work on the boats. Each fall, the boats are lifted out and brought to the farm to be worked on indoors through the winter.
Any work done on our boats requires a lot of skilled labor by a very large and dedicated volunteer force. Sailing club members put in hundreds of hours of their weekend time working on projects such as fiberglassing, re-coring (making sure the boat won’t sink), and repainting. Right now, several of these large projects are in progress.
For those of you who are familiar with the club, you may have heard of “Toy Boat;” a Graham and Schlageter 30″, which has a Chicago-Mackinac race victory under her belt. Club members, Steve Davis and Peter Keuler, are spearheading extensive fiberglassing work on Toy to fix the disrepair in her cabin and other areas on the boat.
Volunteer Mark Rugowski is leading efforts on our J-29 “Executor.” This boat requires a lot of re-coring and fiberglass work on the severely weakened deck. Mark was also named Hoofer of the Month for January due to his years of volunteerism with the fleet boats as well as the work he contributes to get the piers in and out each season. He leads the projects on the J-24s “Estrella” and “Off Call” and repairs the adaptive sailing mount on the J-22 “Minnow.” This is in addition to his work with the Hoofer SCUBA club.
Other volunteers are installing shelving units at the farm and recovering many boats. The massive snow storm Madison suffered a few weeks ago caused some of the shrinkwrap to come undone and the boats were filled with snow.
Thanks also goes out to Bruce Gabert, Jeff Wallace, and the other volunteers for all the work they put into preserving the Hoofer Sailing Club fleet for current and future members.
See you on the lake!
Michelle Czarnecki
