Category Archives: News

All kinds of news about life at the Kanata Sailing Club.

2023-05-31 Spring Beach

KSC Spring Update 🌼🍃⛵

Events, News, ,

Hello everyone, just a few quick updates from your KSC board of directors.

Dock Install Sat June 3rd

Calling everyone who’s able to help! We’re bringing the big dock down the ramp and anchoring it on the beach. This usually requires a bunch of people as it’s very heavy and difficult to maneuver.

If you’re free please come down to the club and help us move it this Sat, June 3rd, around 10:30am. If you bring a wet suit Ken will be very happy to have some help positioning the dock in the water!

Summer Race nights every Tuesday

Weekly Race Night will start on Tuesday, June 13th, and run all summer.

These race nights are great fun and a great way to improve your skills. Our top racer, Steve Harrington, will give an overview of racing rules and strategy (e.g. races are won and lost at the start line) before we venture out on the water for some actual racing. Our instructor crew will run the races, and the two main rules are, nobody left standing onshore, and have fun. Tom Neumann has graciously agreed to supply hamburgers and beer for afterwards (please bring some cash if you want a burger and beer). The session will begin on the beach at 5:30 pm. Learn to sail students welcome to participate as crew.

Power to the Club Coming Soon!

If you’ve been to the club recently you may have noticed a bunch of new hydro poles installed. That’s right, we’re going to have power restored to the clubhouse soon! Stay tuned for more info.

Boat Rigging Refreshers every Saturday

Boat rigging refresher sessions at 1:30 pm on Saturdays throughout June.

Power Boat Tutorial Session Jun 24th

Power boat tutorial session at 4 pm on June 24th – you need your Personal Craft Operator Card (PCOC) to participate!

Duty Day Sign-ups are Live

All active members should sign up for their two duty day shifts on our website.

Sister Sailing Club Events

There are some upcoming events hosted by the Nepean Sailing Club for consideration (see NSC website for registration):

Members helping during Launch Day

Launch Day Next Saturday 9am-3pm

Commodore, Events, News,

April 22 is Next Weekend!

Start thinking about your best chili recipe for the potluck, and email Tom soon at [email protected] if you plan to bring one.

We hope to see plenty of members, old and new, at the club working together to start getting boats and the clubhouse ready for the new sailing season. This event takes place rain or shine.

To bring:

  • gloves and work wear
  • battery powered tools if you have ’em
  • items that you volunteered to store over the winter 

Our exciting plans for the day:

  • Flipping and rigging the RS Quests and Fevas
  • Moving Lasers & Bytes out of the clubhouse and assembling their dollies
  • Taking the Optis out from under the deck to the beach
  • Moving the power boats down to the beach
  • Getting the dock setup in the water
  • Potluck chili when we wrap for the day (BYOB if desired)

We’re fortunate that certain resourceful members have offered to lend us their generator for keeping chili crock-pots warm. That’s right, no hydro as yet, but watch for brand new overhead lines as you drive down the club access road!

Looking forward to hitting the water and the new deck with everyone. See you next weekend.

New Safe Sport Policies

News

From our friends at Sail Canada, we’ve implemented new safe sport policies for all volunteers/employees of the club. See blurb below.

A Commitment to Safe Sport at Kanata Sailing Club
In our sport across Canada a tremendous amount of work and resource has been committed to adopt
the Sail Canada Safe Sport Policy Package at every level of sailing. Safe Sport is a commitment and
initiative to prevent and address maltreatment in sport, ensuring that sport environments create safe
and positive experiences for all.
Kanata Sailing Club has adopted the Safe Sport Policy Package and is committed to fostering a safe sport
environment in our organization and within the sport of sailing. Everyone has a role to play, and we look
to you for support in upholding its expectations and keeping each other accountable. The Policy package
can be found on our website: http://kanatasailingclub.com/club-policies-and-operations/safe-sport-policies/

2022 Sailpast

2023 Spring Updates

Events, News, ,

Registration for training and membership is open for the 2023 sailing season. There are still lots of youth training slots open but these tend to fill up quickly, be sure to sign up early!

Our 2023 launch day has been scheduled for Saturday, April 22nd, starting at 9am. We need all hands on deck for this event, there’s lots to do but it goes quickly if we have lots of help. Like every year this will take place rain or shine, be sure to bring gloves, boots, and work wear with you. We will be removing the boats from the clubhouse, prepping boats with masts and rigging, hauling some of the boats to the beach, and assembling the dock in the water.

The 2023 Public Open House has been scheduled for Saturday, May 6th, from 12-4pm. Open house is when we invite members of the public to come check out the club and see what we’re all about. If you’re available that day come on down to the club and say hello.

New Fevas at the Club

Events, News, ,

The Kanata Sailing Club celebrated our 2022 Sailpast on Saturday Aug 20, and used the occasion to celebrate our spring 2022 Trillium Grant, with speeches, dignitaries and media invited down to the beach to view the boats, and a suckling pig BBQ event running into the evening. 

We thanked Ontario Trillium Foundation for a generous grant of $36,100 that allowed the club to purchase three new RS Feva sailboats for Learn-to-Sail training, and post-graduate recreational sailing, even including Wednesday night races. They’ve already ventured several times as far as the Aylmer marina beach, and to Pinhey’s Point historic site, and performed heroically with both novice and seasoned sailors alike.

The grant was awarded under the terms of the OTF Resilient Communities Fund, to help non-profits rebuild and recover from the impact of COVID-19. We are very grateful for these funds which allowed the purchase of dinghies that:

  • are fun, easily rigged, stable-hulled boats that can be sailed in higher winds without frequent capsize
  • inspire confidence in new sailors, even when sailing solo as required under physical distancing protocols
  • improve retention of Learn-to-Sail graduates and refresh club membership.

Thank you to everyone who participated in making this day a rousing success!

Vice-Commodore, Harbourmaster, Commodore and MC, Training Director sharing the granting story and thanking @ONTrillium from the KSC deck
RS Feva on the water, kitted out for SailPast
3 RS Fevas
KSC board members in front of RS Feva on Trillium Grant Recognition Day / SailPast Day
RS Feva, Quest, and Optis sail past the Commodore during SailPast Day

Club boats on the beach

KSC June Update

News, , ,

Upcoming Events

Powerboat Training

We will be hosting powerboat training for those who have their PCO license already but aren’t familiar with our boats. Training will be held Friday, June 24th, at 6:30pm.

Social Sails

Various members will be hosting informal social sails this summer, starting with a sail to Aylmer on Sunday, June 26 for lunch at the new Le Bateau restaurant. Boats will leave at 11am for the ~30min sail over to Quebec.

This is the perfect opportunity for those who aren’t comfortable sailing by themselves to partake in a group trip. Whether solo, on helm, or as crew, all members who want to go will have a spot.

If you’re interested in organizing an event of your own feel free to contact me and I’ll gladly add it to our calendar and the next newsletter.

Race nights

Race nights are picking up again, starting this week they will be held every Wed at 6pm sharp. Be at the club early to rig the boats and get on the water before the race starts! Our training staff will be onsite to conduct the races so members can focus on the perfect jibe.

New Boats Arriving Soon

Fortunately our little club has scored a major win: we’ve secured funding for several new boats!
Everyone on the board is quite excited to announce the good news, however we’re not allowed to reveal all the details just yet.
Very soon you’ll hear more about the new vessels and the large improvement they’ll have to our training fleet.
And I can’t think of another sentence that starts with “A” but the funny formatting should be enough 😉

Catamaran Training

For those of us who don’t have our red tags yet, Ken is gauging interest in a cat training session this summer. Contact Ken if you’re interested in signing up for red-tag training, this is a one day training course that has a nominal fee.

Duty Days Going Old-School

Due to some technical difficulties with the previous calendar service, the board has decided to go with a more old-school approach to the duty day sign ups. The next time you’re at the club check out the pin-board for the duty day calendars:

Duty Day Signup Forms
Just put your name down for morning or afternoon on either Sat or Sun. Remember that all members are required to come help out for at least two half-day sessions.

Smaller Sails for the Bytes

Carla & Steve have been hard at work on a side project to get smaller, more controllable sails for the bytes. These are now ready and should be easier to sail for those members who are smaller in stature. A huge benefit is that they look and feel like a laser sail so should be more familiar than the usual byte rigging.

RS Quest Rigging

If you haven’t made it out to the Sat afternoon rigging sessions that Heidi has been hosting, you can find a nice rigging video up on our website here.

As always, if you have any comments/concerns, do bring them up with our board of directors.

That’s all for this week, see you out on the water!

Reminder: Public Open House This Weekend

Events, News,

Just a reminder that the public open house is this weekend, Saturday May 7th.

From 12-4pm we open the club up for anyone to swing by and checkout what we’re all about. Come see the new boats, check on the progress of our deck reconstruction, and hear about some exciting (and semi-secret) new things happening this summer. Looks like the weather will be absolutely perfect Sat & Sun so it’ll be a nice day to simply get out of the house and get some fresh air.

We encourage all new and past members to come by and help out, we’ll be starting around 11am to setup the tent. This year consider asking a friend or family member if they want to come join you and see the place, you never know, they may end up liking what they see!

Also a quick shout-out: if you know any teenagers or young-adults that are looking for laid-back summer job (who isn’t!), reach out to Ken, our training director. He’s looking for a new beach-boss to help with our junior training courses this year. Which by the way are almost completely filled, the last few spots are in the Junior Advanced training program.

See you at the club!

Optis drying out

2022 Season Updates

News,

News Worth Sharing

The Kanata Sailing Club has exciting news to share for this upcoming 2022 season:

Membership & Training Forms

Membership and training forms are now live, sign-up now!

sign up

We return to our regular training season this year with our full adult/youth, junior, junior advanced, and family learn-to-sail programs. Checkout those links for more details and class date/times.

We plan on having our usual weekly races as well as some members-only training programs this year. And as this will be the first year with our new RS Quest club sailboats, we’ll offer a rigging class for all members to get acquainted with the new boats and their capabilities.

A Facebook Invitation

We’d like to invite all past and present members who are Facebook users to checkout our private group Kanata Sailing Club Members. (Different content than the public Kanata Sailing Club page). Just hit the “join” button and one of the admins will be pleased to give the thumbs up.

Fund-Raiser to Bring Hydro Back to the Kanata Sailing Club

We are determined to bring Hydro back again in the not too distant future. We lost it in 2018 during a fast-moving storm. 

major storm
Impressive weather radar image, three hours after the storm had passed. 

With the ORCC’s share, and a City of Ottawa Major Capital Projects grant, we’re at three-quarters (75%) of the amount quoted for the job. So, how much do we still need? An estimated $21,000. Oof! That’s what we said, too. 

We have launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise the last funds needed to Bring Hydro Back to the Kanata Sailing Club. Many, many small contributions and some medium-sized contributions will get us there. Donations of any size are hugely welcome. A large contribution or two would be the cherry on top. As this is being written (Feb. 21st), we’ve got just over $1,000 from generous donors!

Please save and check out the campaign link just above since it contains all the gory details, and consider a contribution to bring electric power back to the site… for WiFi and coffee. Not to mention the safety and sanitation issues. Feel free too, to copy and share the link above with friends, family, on social media. 

Three New Boats

We have purchased and accepted delivery on three brand new RS Quests. These mono-hull boats will be used in training, replacing three retired Albacores, and are also certain to be a favourite boat for those who like a sweet-handling, friendly craft for their next sailing adventure with friends and family. They are also self-draining so there’s no bailing after any unexpected capsize.

rs quest
RS Quest. Credit: West Coast Sailing

On the subject of new boats, we’ve also applied for a Trillium Grant for three additional boats from the same family: the RS Feva model. This is a versatile, hard-to-capsize single or two-handed boat that new sailors will find a dream to get out on. There’s never any guarantee we’ll get the grant, but we’ll give you a heads–up when we know. 

Deck Rebuild this Spring

Other great news is that we are rebuilding our beautiful deck in the early spring. We have already dismantled the old deck so there’s no going back now. Onwards!  All members, from seasoned carpenters to complete novices, are welcome to step forward to help rebuild. Watch for a sign-up in an upcoming email and on the Facebook members group when the snow is light on the ground. We can’t wait to host everybody at an Open House on the new deck this summer, enjoying our spectacular view of the Ottawa River.

A faithful friend, the old deck.
Deck now stripped down, but will rise again.

Help Wanted emails will go out. 

As always, if you have any comments/concerns, do bring them up with our board of directors.

We look forward to seeing you out on the water this 2022 season!

Annual General Meeting – AGM

Events, Membership, News

Annual General Meeting has been booked for
Nov 10th, 7:00 PM at the Nepean Sailing Club.

Everyone should come out to hear the updates from the board and see how we are doing. Come a bit earlier to enjoy dinner with your fellow scally wags. A few our our board members plan on retiring so we will be nominated some new members to the board. Please consider volunteering your time as a board member. Many of us are first time board members and it has been a breeze and a fun time. Secondly the club runs on volunteers and there are only so many of us. It may be your turn again to take up a directorship. Look forward to seeing everyone there.

Click here to add the meeting it to your google calendar.

KSC Open – Saturday 31 Aug

Events, News, Sailing

6 Sailboats participated in the KSC Open this past weekend with 7 sailors partaking. The winds which continued to build throughout the morning met us at the start line at 15-20 km/h with gusts to 30. We sailed 3 races in the morning before breaking for lunch followed by 4 races in the afternoon.  Mike T. and Jason M., past board members of KSC joined us from the NSC and sailed in the 29er. 4 lasers and 1 byte joined in the chase. A great day was had by all. 

The results are as follows:

  1. Ken S – laser
  2. Liam M. – laser
  3. Carla M – byte
  4. Eric N – laser
  5. Gerry – laser

Mike and Jason competed but were not scored.

Thanks to Annie, Amy, and Steve for Race Committee

Thanks to Annie M and Jean M for the lunch.