Good Afternoon.

I wanted to give the membership a status update as to the progress that has been made since the fire at the Club on Wednesday night. On Thursday the board had an emergency meeting and strategy session that went extremely well. The board created two committees to move the club forward and get it back up and running as soon as possible. Both of these committees will report directly to the board.

The first is a steering committee to work on the reconstruction effort and asset restoration phase of this process. That committee is chaired by Doug Wipperman (PC); the members on that committee are Mac VanStratt (Commodore) Ken Stepnitz (VC), Steve Wyckoff (RC), Bud Cline (PC), and Doug Higgins (PC).

The second is an operations committee to restore the services of the Club both temporarily and for the longer term. This committee is co-chaired by Dan Spyhalski (PC) and Dave Skibowski (PC) and Club Treasurer. The members on this committee are Sarah Elzinga (Club Manager), Jessica Gerber (Former Club Manager), Jay Kraft (Board Member) and Paul Davis (Board Member)

The members on these two committees care deeply about the club and have volunteered their time to move the Club forward in this challenging period. We are blessed to have such qualified and dedicated individuals in our membership. I'm confident that we as a group are very capable of taking the necessary steps to rebuild the Club.

My goal is to get as much feedback from the membership as possible. We as a board feel that it is extremely important to get the memberships opinion on any options that become available when we get to a rebuilding phase. Steve Wyckoff has set up a blog on the Clubs homepage to act as a sounding board for the membership. This is where I will be posting future status updates and information about the club. If there are any questions about how to operate the blog please contact Steve and he would be happy to take you through it.

The investigators still have not determined a cause of the fire. I am meeting with the Elmwood Township Deputy Fire Chief, Leelanau County Sheriff's Investigator, Insurance Investigator and the Michigan State Police Fire Investigator on Monday. Hopefully between those four individuals a cause will be determined and we can start the restoration process after Monday sometime. Until a cause is determined nothing can be done to the building or its contents.

We secured the structure yesterday morning with permission from the appropriate officials to prevent any further loss of assets and entry into the building.

We plan to move forward with the Clam Bake at this point, the details of which are being ironed out. I also plan to hold the bi-annual membership meeting, location yet to be determined. As for the remainder of our calendar it will remain for the most part unchanged.

The outpouring of support from both the community and the membership has been truly overwhelming. You don't realize how great a community we live in until an event like this takes place. I want to thank everyone that has come forward to help the Club these last few days.

Please keep in mind that we are all volunteers who have lives outside of the Club to maintain. This next year is going to be very taxing on the Club and its officers so please bear with us. We have a common goal.

I was reading a post on a website called Sailing Anarchy and someone posted a message in response to the fire that said: Actually the yacht club did not burn, just their building did. Clubs are not about structures, they're about members and fun ! What a great statement.

Please log on to the website and blog for further updates.

With Optimism,

Mac VanStratt

2008 Commodore