By Alan Frederick
If you missed your club's Winter workshop held at the Frank Lloyd Wright designed Fontana Boat House - SHAME ON YOU!! With 118 people in attendance, it was our most successful one ever. We would certainly like to thank our hosts at the West Side Rowing Club, Buffalo, NY, for allowing us the opportunity to be the first group to tour their new facility.

Our first presenters were Jay Meyers (head of the Frank Lloyd Wrights Boat House Corp.), Bob Spampata (Pres. of the WSRC.), and our own Craig Thrasher who gave informative talks about the history behind the boathouse, its design, and how the building was constructed to exact Wright specifications. The final cost of the building has now been placed at $6.2M. It is a great addition to the waterfront area and will most certainly be a major tourist attraction for many years to come. It obviously compliments other Wright structures in the area such as the Darwin Martin House and Graycliff in Derby, NY. The rowing club is one of the largest of its kind in the world with over 600 athletes competing on a regular basis. After a tour of the building, Peg Thrasher and Mo Downey showed us the finer points of rowing next door at their main facility. Big Bob Boeckel “volunteered” to be coxswain in one of the girl's training sculls, but they declined saying they are overworked now and that would put them over the edge.

Our next presenters were Bob and Terry Weaver who gave a very informative and exacting description of how they varnished their double cockpit runabout over the winter using the roller and tip off method. What they didn't go through to try and eliminate that elusive enemy DUST. The results of their efforts are certainly evident in the final product. Not only does their system work, it takes less time than the tried and true bristle brush method. We were all hoping for the full monty, Spandex and all, but they refused our requests.

During our lunch break, Craig Thrasher then gave an informative power point presentation on fire safety, not only on board, but also in our shops and homes. He is a fire scene investigator for the East Aurora Vol. Fire Co. and stressed the importance of a pro-active approach to not only fire prevention, but also what to do in case of a fire. I'm sure there was a run on smoke detectors at the local stores following the talk.