[Update: A few people have written in to mention various bugs, such as page loads being a bit slow, and the Contacts page misbehaving. Contacts has been fixed up, and work is underway to speed things up and smooth a few other details, so thanks very much for the feedback. We’ll be all tuned up as the season kicks off. -Graham, 28/03/16]
Hello Sailors,
Let me welcome you to the 2016 season and the new albacore.ca website!
If we’ve not met, I’m Graham and this year I’m the CAA’s Vice-Commodore – Promotions.
We have a great season ahead, the events and regattas you know and love, education days, and even a few tweaks to the formats of some of our favourite race events!
There are two big projects we’ve been working on to kick off the season, and one of them you’re looking at now… albacore.ca has been given a refresh!
With the relaunch of our beloved site we’ve made it easier to find the events and results postings you need, we’ve streamlined and refreshed a great deal of our promotional content, we’re promoting learning-to-sail programs and directing visitors to our partner Albacore clubs, and much more.
Our hope is that the new site also opens up more opportunities to build our community and share our stories. As part of this effort, we’re launching a great campaign called RAW FISH 2016!
Raw Fish 2016 will be a video documentary of our summer of sailing, and an important opportunity for our members and clubs to better get to know each other. There’s amazing stuff going on in Albacore sailing and we want to see the places people sail, meet the characters in our communities, celebrate our victories, whether in races or just learning new skills! We want you, Albacore sailors, to film short videos of all the amazing stuff going on where you sail, whether that’s your local club, an international regatta, or just a great day out at the cottage!
The plan is to post all these films to our YouTube Channel so the whole community gets to know what goes on from Hamilton to Nepean to Shelburne and everywhere in between. Information on how to contribute your video stories will be posted soon! And for a bit more on our motivation for RAW FISH 2016, check out this post.
Now, this has been quite an involved update of our website. There is a lot of content and history tied up in pre-2016-albacore.ca, and it will take time to finish transitioning some of that material to our new site, but we’ll have things all tidied up nicely before you know it.
With a little luck, you’ll find renewing membership, locating event information, receiving mail communications, and many other albacore.ca services easier to access and use than ever before.
I will apologize in advance for any malfunctions or bugs that should appear in the coming weeks, and I’ll try to have them quickly resolved. We’ve tried our best to build a platform that will allow for convenient access to the information and services you need as a Canadian Albacore sailor and CAA member, and that will carry us forward for years to come. We are of course a volunteer organization working as hard as we can to support and promote sailing a boat we all love, so your patience is appreciated as we work out any web difficulties that may arise
That said, there are great things ahead for the CAA and albacore.ca.
Renew your memberships, and have a fantastic season. The Albacore community is the best thing going in Canadian sailing!
Graham P*
Vice Commodore – Promotions
*Contact me for anything website-related at pearson.gn@gmail.com. Cheers.