2024 CSC Oktoberfest Regatta

We served ice water from a cooler, lemonade and tea from jugs which will now be used to keep water in the clubhouse (we don't have running water) for the dogs. We always use washable cups.

No straws ever at our clubhouse!

Year round we use real silverware, washable cups and utensils. We are in the process of switching to washable dishes, but for now it's paper plates and bowls.

The majority of our members use only cloth shopping bags. I can't speak for everyone, though.

We started using practical awards about 5 years ago, with water bottles, flasks, hand towels. This year we did beach towels (Etsy, but shipped from GA so less of a footprint in trade) after seeing the photo of awards at Niantic Bay Yacht Club on the S of the S FB page! Great idea and well received!

While there are still many in Savannah who aren't fully on board, we are making progress in our small club. Not one fork was lost to the trash, everyone put their dishes in the wash bin, no one brought glass (which is no longer recycled here). I was impressed by all who respected our club's efforts in this and other regattas. Your ads make it easier to promote, so thank you.

CSC partners with Clean Coast (cleancoast.org) to clean up local waterways and barrier islands monthly. A local high school student (seen in the 2nd photo), whose mom is a CSC sailor, just created a Clean Coast Club at his school and we are giving full support. This cleanup was at a local boat ramp a week before our regatta.

We had plenty of signs but because of the hurricane and craziness resulting in trying to set up, we were minimal on posting them. Still, we did it enough that people followed the instructions!

All food was prepared by our members. No one had power, so it was amazing to see the array of options-many salads! I can't speak to where it was sourced-we all love our farmers markets, but those were shut down and grocery stores were mostly closed, refrigerators were off-I think most everyone used everything they had in their fridges! It was awesome.

While we had a 5 person committee to do the set up, etc., I have to say everyone in this photo (and more) are our Green Team. Our clubhouse, shown in the “green team’ photo, is entirely from re-purposed items and wood. Members (before my time) took apart an A-Frame house in Midway, GA (known as the battle of Midway) in about 2009 and spent 3-4 years building this building. I came along in 2014 and there was not yet electricity. Everything-even the tables and chairs, ceiling fans, floors-was salvaged from that house and other buildings over the years. They didn’t really know at the time how forward thinking that was! But we are very proud of our clubhouse.

See #8

Our plan was to provide a compost bin I could bring home to my own compost. With the storm we just had to leave that off our list. However, I did notice there was NO food waste in the trash!

Everything we do is via regattanetwork.com online. Promotions are via email and FB.

See #7. Next Clean Coast cleanup is a kayak c/u in a local creek.

We race with multiple clubs, so participants go to their respective clubs to launch their boats. For us, many of our skippers and crew live in close proximity to the boats and the clubhouse. Some do carpool, and the 2 marinas we launch from are within a mile of eachother.As for the party itself, the racers from club the furthest away (The Landings Sailing Club) do ride together because it is far by road. We do encourage ride sharing because our parking is extremely limited.

All of us at CSC talk about our local ecology, how our boating practices are affecting our waterways and marshes. DNR is very restrictive in our area which makes it hard to rebuild docks after storms, limiting availability of slips in marinas. We discuss how waste is discharged (hopefully NOT in the waterways), we attend meetings with the local marine business organization. We, actually, are the only club actively promoting clean waterways and clean boating. Several of our members also lead charters (including myself) to various islands and teach people (mostly tourists) about the ecology of our marshes (inhabitants) and beaches. We are very aware of being the calving grounds for the endangered Atlantic Right Whales and follow their progress year round. We harvest our own oysters in the only certified clean area and educate members and others on why we can’t eat them from other areas (pollution). Education doesn’t have to happen in a single, planned event. These are things we discuss at our Friday night socials, and we spread the word as much as we can.

See # 9. We provided an array of veggies and salads.

We have one committee boat and one mark boat in this race. The committee boat is anchored, engine off. The mark boat sets the marks, and then rafts up to the committee boat, motor off, unless needed by racing boats or to adjust the marks. We do not have spectators on the water anywhere. There are no coach boats. We are known for ’trash overboard rescues’—if we see litter on the water we retrieve it! Most of us have been using reusable water bottles for years (and give them as awards) and we state that we want no plastic water bottles in this race. We even put this in our SI (attached).

We promote things like this and do our best to convince others.

We are very proud that our past commodore, Ed Owens, after his diesel died this summer, became the first in our community to go electric! It was on the boat but not yet hooked up so we used zero fuel of our own to get out and back in for the regatta. We did get help from other boats, and had the tide in our favor. Everyone was impressed and very curious! In addition, your FB posts are almost always shared on our FB pages. Thank you.