September 2025 Newsletter
Editors: Mary Lu Hodgins and Anne Martin
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John Zimmerman, for OOYC Board of Directors
Time to Rebuild our Main Dock
Our main dock which runs north to south is approximately 50 years old dating back to the 1970s. During that time, it has been repaired as needed but after a half century it has finally reached the end of its useful life. Deck boards and stringers have broken with increased frequency and main dock sections have dropped more often without warning from aging and slipping hardware. Fortunately, no serious injuries have occurred.
The west to east approach dock was professionally replaced almost ten years ago. All but four finger docks have been rebuilt over the past nine years with many thanks to the leadership by the Petries, Larry Travis and help from our member volunteers. A main dock upgrade has been a repeated discussion for years, however, it is now unavoidable. Floating docks were considered several years ago but the cost was determined to be prohibitive. During the past two or three years we have looked at partial repairs to full replacement, but affordability continued to be a problem. I’m pretty sure Larry Travis, our dock master, has presented about every option possible to our board. It has been obvious that the amount of work required is beyond the capabilities of our current membership.
Last month a motion was made at the August member meeting to hire an independent contractor to rebuild the main dock for an estimated cost of between $80,000 and $100,000 to be funded with a combination of donations, loans from interested members and the expected sale of the vacant land the club owns. Our members voting at that meeting approved this project plan unanimously. Deck boards, stringers and hardware will be replaced while leaving support poles in place. This dock funding and rebuild plan will soon be underway with actual work beginning by the end of September. Dock holders should keep an eye on your emails for updates including requests to move your boats. More details on this exciting project will be shared as they become available.
John
(716) 432-1810
SeniorDirector@OOYC.org
| | Dockmaster, Larry Travis
To all members, especially those that have a dock:
As Bob Hodgins reported in his update to the membership, the main dock and last four finger docks rebuild project has been approved by the Board and membership. The rebuild will commence on Monday, September 29th and take approximately 3 to 4 weeks. Although the actual teardown and rebuild of the main dock and rebuild of the finger docks is being contracted out, there is still work that needs to be done by our members to prepare for this project.
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Here is the list of tasks that need to be done:
- Please let me know when you plan on having your boat hauled out. It would be appreciated that boats not planned on being used in October be hauled out prior to the 29th. We will need all boats still in the water to move from south to north for the contractors, then north to south when the contractors complete the south end. Water and power will not be available to the south slips when the project commences. Water and power will not be available to the north when work begins in that direction. All boat owners who plan on staying will be responsible for moving their own boats when required.
- The four finger docks (40/41, 42/43, 44/45 and 46) need to be leveled and then decking and stringers removed. This task is not included in our contract. We are planning a major work party for Saturday, Sept 20th and Sunday the 21st if needed to do the teardown and prep of these docks. I understand that we no longer require work hours, but it would be great if more than the usual members (in their 70’s and 80’s) show up to help. Lunch and drinks will be provided.
- We will need volunteers to paint the 12 dock poles that may need to be installed. This can be done as soon as we pick them up from the Amish. We are planning on them being completed by the 21st.
- All dock boxes have to be removed and stored in a designated area with your name and slip number attached prior to 9/29. Any dock boxes left will be removed by the contractor and billed to the club who in turn will bill the owners. We will be installing extra-long dock box deck boards at time of rebuild at every slip (46 slips).
- Once materials start to arrive, parking at the bottom of the hill will be off limits for loading and unloading your vehicle. Room is going to be needed for supplies (lumber and dock poles), contractor vehicles, dumpster, prep work and dock boxes. The driveway near the south steps may be the closest place to park. As this is very narrow, it will be important that you don’t leave your car there for anything other than loading or unloading your vehicle.
This project will be a major improvement to our main dock. We hope that we can count on our members to assist with this project. I need to know:
- When you plan on hauling your boat for the winter?
- Can you assist with the demolition of the last four finger docks?
- Can you be available to paint the poles?
As this information is critical to the execution of the project, I would appreciate it if you could call me with a commitment for these items. My number is:
561-846-2366
Thanks in advance for your cooperation.
Larry Travis - Dockmaster
DockMaster@OOYC.org
| | Fleet Captain, Darren Leonard
FleetCaptain@OOYC.org | | | | Kim Hofmann
for Fleet Captain Youth Sailing, Becky Almeter
It was quite a feat to pull off Youth Sailing Camp this summer as there were a few major and unexpected hurdles just weeks before camp was scheduled to begin! Thankfully, it came together quite well with the help of many! Several of us have been a part of the program for years, so within a couple of weeks, we had all of the parts and pieces lined up for another great summer!
Our camp hosted 11 sailors week one, 13 sailors week two, and 12 sailors week three. Most of the campers who attended camp this year had a wonderful time and plan to return next year, and some will bring a sibling or a friend!
| | | | We had the pleasure of sharing in a privately organized youth sail/ fun day with Olcott Yacht Club on July 23rd! It was a beautiful day to be on the water. We finished about 8 races before the wind picked up. After racing for a few hours, the kids played an ice-breaker name game in the yard, and finally, we finished the day with a hot lunch. Super day! Thank you to those club members and sailor's parents who joined us for that special event! |  | On July 29th, we attended an inter-club regatta in Buffalo. It was a great experience for 7 of our more experienced OOYC youth sailors.
|  | Special thanks to race coach, Nina Muscarella, for leading the regatta team and providing extra practices throughout the season!
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| Last but not least, our youth sailing program hosted a one-day sail basics class for local students and their parents on Friday, August 29th. We have already had several inquiries for camp information and adult sailing lessons as a result. Let's go! |
It is time to haul out and clean up! Please contact Kim Hofmann (585) 356-9086, Becky Almeter (585) 813-7259, or Mary Lu Hodgins (585) 343-9084 if you are available to help on any of the following dates:
Friday, September 5th: Fleet Haul Out (Hofmann)
Saturday, September 6th: Sail shed and closet clean up and organization/ Boat and motor care (Almeter/ Hodgins)
Monday, September 8th: Any remaining boat cleaning (Hofmann)
Our Youth Sailing early bird registration is now open for 2026!
Please encourage your friends and family to join the fun! Visit our website for more information: ooyc.org > learn to sail > youth sailing
Kim Hofmann
Membership@OOYC.org
(585) 356-9086
Call or text at any time!
|  |  | | Treasurer, Tim Quirk
As of 8/31/2025 Bank Balances are:
Operating Account: $41,332.91
Money Market: $14,801.13
Youth Sailing: $14661.62
All Expenses are paid to date.
The Club’s NYS Liquor License renewal is due in Sept. at a cost of $950. It is important to keep this active until Cortney Black’s Riverside Retreat can get up and running on their own license.
No known large expenses coming up besides taxes and possible Prepay Propane.
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to call/text me at 619-708-0397 or email me at treasurer@ooyc.org.
Tim | | | Ketchup Race Party Summary
This year’s Ketchup Post Race Party was hosted by two newcomers in the party hosting space, Dana Leonard and Tim Quirk, yes me. Dana and my goal; “Put on a party that people would talk about and hopefully want to see at the club again.” We thought that this party would be a great way to introduce or reintroduce OOYC to our neighbors and friends.
We started out by determining that we wanted live music and were lucky enough to find that the rock band, “Something Else” just happened to be free on August 30th. The contract was signed, and we were really rocking and rolling, pun intended, on this party planning adventure.
Next food and drink. The Ketchup Post Race party has long had Bloody Mary's as well as Bloody Caesar’s as the signature drink and each racing boat and other OOYC members have brought appetizers and snacks to share. This seemed like too good of a tradition to mess with so we immediately reached out to the Muscarella family and asked them if we could count on them to provide the Signature Drink and without hesitation their answer was YES! Sure, enough they showed up with their Blood Mary’s and Bloody Caesar’s made using their secret and proprietary recipe that never disappoints. Darren Leonard put the word out and challenged each race boat to come up with their best dishes to pass and Dana and I rounded out the beverages with beer, soda, and water.
We wanted to have a purpose for this party other than the obvious of celebrating a great racing season, so we came up with a couple of Ideas. One was a 50/50 gift basket raffle. We sold 50/50 raffle tickets and each person who purchased those would also get one ticket to win a ketchup themed gift basket created and donated by my wife and daughter. The fun thing about this 50/50 raffle was that the winner got to choose the recipient of the winning funds between OOYC Youth Sailing, OOYC Sailing Banquet, Oak Orchard Lighthouse Museum, OOYC Dock Rebuild Project, and The Ketchup Post Race Party Fund. This year's 50/50 winner, Onnalee O’Connor's recipient of choice was Youth Sailing. Allie Leonard was the winner of the Ketchup Themed gift basket. The second idea was Dana Leonard had T-shirts made with a Logo created by Darren Leonard depicting the event and sold them for $20 a piece. Each and every one of those twenty dollars from the shirts was donated to Youth Sailing as well due to Dana’s generosity. Between both the initiatives I am happy to report that the Ketchup Post Race Party was able to donate $529 to youth sailing and possibly more because I have heard that there is another order of T-shirts going to the presses soon. Pro Tip – if you want a T-Shirt of the event reach out to Dana or me so that we can get you on the next order.
We would also like to thank the many people who so willingly stepped up to help us make this a great event. It was so nice to see how eager OOYC club members, family, and friends were to help us put on a great event.
In my opinion the event was a huge success. We had a great band that played for five hours, there was more than enough food and drink for everyone in attendance, people sang, danced, laughed, smiled, stayed until the end and we raised almost $600 for youth sailing. If you were there, THANK YOU! If you helped out in any way, THANK YOU! If you’d like to see something similar next year let Dana or me know. | | Vice Commodore, Jeff Thuman
Chef Cortney has provided the club with a terrific menu and great food all season long. I would like to take the opportunity to thank her for all the hard work and commitment throughout the season. It was not always easy, but Cortney never gave up. I appreciate her great attitude, charming personality and connection she made with many of the members of our club.
Cortney likes to cook, and she did a fantastic job providing excellent main courses, a variety of tasty specials and fantastic desserts. Her passion for cooking really came through in a big way. I’m looking forward to seeing what she can do next year.
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This was a year for her to learn about operating a business, many lessons were in fact learned. As she prepares for next year, she will take these lessons and experiences with her and make any necessary adjustments to bring the club an even greater dining experience in 2026.
The restaurant will remain open through the first two weekends in September. Last day is September 13th. Menu items will begin to be sold out. We will not be ordering a lot of inventory at this point in the season. Please come in and use the balance on your chit cards and be sure to say "Hi" to Cortney and her team before it’s all over for the year.
Thank you to all the members that supported the restaurant in a big way by showing up practically every time the doors were open, it made a difference.
Thank you to all the staff that did their respective jobs with great attitudes, often late into the night. Everyone pitched in and helped wherever they were needed, it was truly spectacular to watch. Thanks to all of you, it would not be possible without you!
To the members that made the wait staff and bartenders feel appreciated by kind words, generous tips, complete understanding when things get behind, I would like to personally thank you for the respect you showed to everyone who worked so hard to provide the best experience they could. Thank you!
I would also like to thank the members for allowing me to serve on the Board of Directors over the past seven years, it was a great experience, and I was able to make a lot of friends throughout that time. However, it’s time for me to take a break from serving the club in that capacity and pass the baton to someone else. Please consider serving, the club needs you!
Jeff
ViceCommodore@OOYC.org
| | Marketing Director, Trish Brantingham
Winding Down…
As the season and my term as Marketing Director come to a close, I have reflected on the past couple of years and the potential for future marketing activities.
I knew when I volunteered to “help” with marketing that I lacked the important social media skills that would be important in promoting OOYC to the broader community. While some others were (and continue to be) helpful in posting information on our Facebook pages and on
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our website as well as giving me tips on how to navigate the maddeningly frustrating Club Express system, I realized that it was up to me as Marketing Director to get up to speed to do at least a rudimentary social marketing campaign. So, I dug in.
The first major effort was a redesign of the website. I had experience in managing a website redesign, but not with hands on implementation. Countless hours battling with Club Express (did I mention maddeningly frustrating?) resulted in what I considered an acceptable design and, more importantly, better site navigation/organization. I recognize that there is vast room for improvement, and I am confident that your next Marketing Director will bring the stronger skills needed to take the website to the next level.
Once I felt comfortable in attempting to drive traffic to the website, I could avoid social media no longer. I am old. I am slow. But I did have a personal Facebook page, so at least knew the basics of how it worked. And Facebook itself offers fairly good guidance on how to “boost” posts, turning them into ads. Through trial and error (lots of error), I figured out how to create decent graphics for posting and I put my marketing communications experience to work to create a seven-part membership campaign. I allocated funds just on the basis of what was in the marketing budget ($2500 less about 500% in prior commitments) without any idea whether it would be enough to generate response since we had no experience. We had thousands of impressions (times on a screen) and dozens of clicks on the link to the website. When we began to promote the sailing school, results jumped to the tens of thousands of impressions and hundreds of link clicks. Overall, from Feb through the end of the campaigns, we were seen on screens 162,181 times and saw 4,690 clicks or other forms of engagement. We spent under $.50 per click.
Were the campaigns a success? Defining success as new members or students, no. Defining success as expanding exposure and planting the seed, a resounding yes. Understanding why engagement did not translate into “sales” is a challenge for which we have few analytical tools. Perhaps the website is not sufficiently attractive or informative. Perhaps the offers were not compelling. Perhaps people were just curious. Only future testing and experience will tell.
Some thoughts for the future: A persistent challenge is getting sufficient quality photos and videos to post. When people are out sailing or enjoying drinks with friends, taking photos is rarely top of mind – I know it isn’t for me. One option is to use commercial photos, but they would lack the actual club views, and free options are rarely as useful as the paid options. Another is to make this a priority for the next Marketing Director.
Another challenge that will surprise no one: funding. It is well known that successful ad campaigns (in any media) require repetition and consistency. A budget of $2500 is not enough to fund that consistency across the year. On Facebook, the sweet spot in terms of cost effectiveness seems to be about $70 per week. Given 52 weeks in a year, subtracting Dec and Jan, leaves 43 weeks when we should have something boosted. At $70 per week, that would be a budget of $3010 just for Facebook ads. That doesn't include purchased graphics or exposure through other media such as the Orleans HUB through which we reached 10,000 people a day for seven days, the Visitor Guide that we have traditionally paid for, or Instagram and other social media, which we haven’t even touched. And it would require substantial effort to generate the images, create the posts, boost posts, and track results. Is the club ready to make that commitment?
I am truly grateful for the opportunity to push myself beyond my comfort zone to engage in today’s social media marketing. I am confident that the next Marketing Director will have fresh ideas, more sophisticated skills, and energy. I wish you all happy boating.
| Rear Commodore, Larry Beneway
We have reached Labor Day weekend and fall seems to be nearby. I want to thank all who have helped with club maintenance issues over the summer.
Eric Heveron was kind enough to solve electrical issues in the kitchen in July.
The tree trimming project that our commodore led gave all of us great views from the dining room around the same time.
Jim Dymond has done a great job of managing our wet spring hay lot to now dealing with drought like conditions.
Others who stepped up and helped solve the bar cooler issues while Trish and I were away.
It takes a community of people to make a club like this work, many offer their help behind the scenes and never get recognized. Thank you
We will have our club closing work party on October 25th starting around 9:00 am. I will email our club closing work list as we get closer to the date.
Larry
RearCommodore@OOYC.org
| | Website Director, Carl Engle
The summer is unfortunately winding down, but hopefully we still have some more great weather to enjoy the lake, as well as your club.
Please remember if you haven’t RSVP’d for the 4th annual OOYC International Food Fest beginning at 5:00 pm on Sunday, September 14th, please let Lori or myself know, as soon as possible. Feel free to come and set up your table before 5.
There is a Bills game that afternoon, so come early, if you wish, and enjoy the game at your club.
| | | Mark your calendars for Saturday, October 25th for the annual morning Fall Cleanup Day-watch for more details soon.
Remember, the website calendar is always updating with new and exciting activities. If you have an idea for a fun event…PLEASE don’t hesitate to volunteer to host…just contact me and we will add it. Let’s all work together to make OOYC our favorite place to be this fall! 🍁🍂
Carl
WebsiteDirector@OOYC.org
|  | | Enjoying Fairhaven |  | | Cruising to Fairhaven | | |
| Notes from the Commodore, Bob Hodgins
Greetings as we wind down a wonderful summer season here at OOYC. My current project at the club is the funding of the dock rebuild project. My goal is to raise $100,000.00 for this capital project, with $80,000.00 being the minimum to commence the building.
At the membership meeting on Saturday, August 23 the project and the funding plan was explained in detail, with members asking many good questions. A vote was held on three motions, all passing unanimously. Those three requests were; 1) approval to spend up to $100,000.00 to rebuild the main dock, 2) approval to borrow up to $100,000.00 from private lenders for the project, 3) approval to sell the vacant land across Archbald Road.
| | | At the meeting I asked for any member that may be interested in purchasing the land as an investment and as a way to support the club. I received an immediate offer, which the board voted to approve at a board meeting on Tuesday, September 2. If sale closes without any problems that will greatly reduce the debt incurred by the club for this project.
I also asked for members to loan the club money and again was very pleased by the deep commitment so many members have to supporting the club. I was also flabbergasted by the offer of not a loan, but a gift from a few members whom wished to remain anonymous.
Assuming the sale of the land is completed soon, I have more commitments for loans that we need. Until the money is in the bank, I am considering several of the loan commitments on hold, hopefully not needed. I will be in touch with each potential lender personally when all is finalized.
When I first offered to find the funding, I was somewhat concerned that we would be successful. What a wonderful reminder of the great group we call our friends here at OOYC!
Bob
Commodore@OOYC.org
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Steak Roast 2025
Our annual steak roast which traditionally is one of our late season events was held on Saturday, August 16, 2025. This was our most attended roast in the last five years with 91 members and guests.
For those who like the statistics:
Income…….. $3275 Total
$2080 online + $1115 at door + $80 extra steak buy back
Expenses…….. $2521.96 Total
$392.82 supplies & Decorations
$300 entertainment
$1829.14 Riverside food, catering
Net Profit…….. $753.04
| | | The events and parties we have at OOYC depend heavily on help from our member volunteers and this year was no exception. Many thanks to those members, family and friends who brought appetizers and helped with set up, food preparation, cooking, serving and then clean up. Courtney Black from Riverside Retreat was a big help sourcing the delicious steaks and salmon plus preparing dinner salads and side dishes.
After dinner Commodore, Bob Hodgins, welcomed members and their guests. He made a special mention of the ten members from Island Yacht Club in Wilson, our closest reciprocal club, who came to celebrate with us. Bob then recognized our past commodores for their service to OOYC and thanked our current board of directors for the work they have done.
Mike McCauley then entertained for the next three plus hours. Lots of great music, dancing and fun!
John Zimmerman
(716) 432-1810
Johnz11540@gmail.com | Keep up with the latest posts on our Facebook Pages, Oak Orchard Yacht Club - Club Life and Oak Orchard Yacht Club at Facebook.com.
Check out the ads for OOYC which are in the current issue of Scuttlebutt and in the Orleans County Tourism Booklet.
Bottle Returns to Benefit OOYC Youth Sailing
When you are at the club please deposit your returnable bottles and cans in the barrel by the dumpster or in the barrel by the laundry room. These will be dropped off at Upstate Bottle Return. Or you can drop your bottles and cans off at Upstate Bottle Return, 449 West Ave, Albion. Just tell them it is for the OOYC Youth Sailing Program. Every little bit helps.
Member Boating & Club Event Photos
This is your newsletter so if you have any photos you would like to share of your boating activities or OOYC events during the season or over the winter months, email them to us (preferably in .jpg format) at marylu@hodginsengraving.com or annemartin2@charter.net.
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