Fleet Captains, Fleet Leaders, and District Commodores,

The Class sincerely appreciates your leadership at the local level. Hopefully we can all agree - having more boats out sailing, whether day-sailing, or sailing in fleet or district races is good for the sailors, the Fleets, the Class and Sailing in general.

With your help, the Lightning LOYALS group is hoping that we - collectively - can focus on building fleet activity, using the ideas many of you have shared in your fleet success stories from the Fleet Captain Survey completed earlier this year.

Similarly, many of us have challenges, where fleet racing has dropped away.  What are the main challenges?  Can they be tackled by Fleet Captains and District Commodores?  How can the Class help?  Can we whittle these challenges down to a handful that are relevant to most fleets and where the Class and other leaders can help?  Our collective task is to help each other with defining the issues and then create paths forward along with some quantifiable goals.

We have 50+ fleet leaders and 30+ District leaders with many good ideas.  After a preview at the Governing board meeting (October 24, Noon EDT), we will be launching a discussion forum where we can expand on interesting thoughts shared over the past several months. 

Hearing from your Fleet/District is what is important.   We will start the Fleet Captains and District Commodores forum with a nearly blank page.  Your ideas drive the conversation.

Here is link to the Fleet Captain & District Commodore Forum . You can also navigate to the forum by going to the Lightning website, click on the "Communications" Tab, then "Fleet-District Leaders Forum" link. 

To access the forum, you will need to log into the Lightning Class website  Website Login Instructions .   

In addition, here are instructions for using the forum Fleet Captain & District Commodore Forum Instructions , along with contact info if you have any trouble.

We will schedule two Zoom meetings to work through some of the logistics, questions, and get everyone started. Please watch for those dates and times.

Looking forward to the exchange of ideas,