Greetings from the Pacific Inter-Club Yacht Association’s
21st Annual Margot Brown Wheelchair Regatta Committee!

We will be holding the 21st Annual Margot Brown Wheelchair Regatta on Saturday, 23 September 2017. We look forward to having representatives from Livermore, Martinez, the Masonic Home in Fremont, Palo Alto, San Francisco, and Yountville again for this great activity. The VFW and American Legion volunteers may be bringing vets as well.  With that in mind, we need to put out some important information and requests.

Health and Safety:   For the safety of the vets, firefighters, Coasties and the boat owners, we do not allow electric wheelchairs on board the boats.  If you have folks in electric wheelchairs please bring them to the event, but have standard, non-electric chairs along to transfer the vets into before getting into the boat queue.

Head gear and sunscreen are also helpful! Thank you!

Also, as you know the day can be very warm.  I encourage you to hydrate the veterans before arriving at the Encinal Yacht Club.  We will have water bottles available but discourage drinking up in the queue or on the boats as the heads (“bathrooms” for non-sailors) are not easy to use.  Encinal has bathrooms as you enter the yard.  Please encourage your vets to use them before boarding the boats.

Photography:   We encourage the veterans and hospital escorts to bring cameras along.  This is a great photo opportunity.  We have had Polaroid cameras available in the past and have a few available this year.  Film, on the other hand, is becoming more difficult to obtain.

Arrival at Encinal Yacht Club :  Encinal is located at 1251 Pacific Marina, Alameda, 94501.  Please check their web site:  www.encinal.org for directions.

A drop-off point by the entrance gate will be marked off.  The Arkansas Division of the US Navy Sea Cadets will be there to assist with off-loading folks and bringing them into the club’s yard.  A separate area for vehicle parking will be available.  A quick egress is requested as buses may be arriving at the same time.

Numbers Attending.    As we get closer to the event, it would be very helpful for last minute shopping, boat assignments and so on, to have a relatively good number of how many people are coming from your facilities.  Please email your approximate numbers to Pete VanDerWerff,  petevdw@comcast.net,  by Tuesday, 19 SEP.

He will need to have the following information:

1. Number of wheelchair bound Vets:
2. Number of attendants:
3. Number of Visually challenged vets:
4. Number of other ambulatory:

Peter VanDerWerff will be the point of contact the day of the event.  Contact number: (mobile: 408-981-3519).  Thank you so much for allowing PICYA to honor those who have served our country with this special event.  Thanks too for assisting us in gathering this information ahead of time.  On behalf of our PICYA Commodore, Linda Blue  ( linda.a.blue@gmail.com,) and all the volunteers, we are looking forward to seeing you and your vets on Saturday, 23 SEP!