History

Around  1989, interests began to build in sailing on Lake Conroe, still a very  young lake, having been formed in 1973.  Gus Behling and Veit Gentry,  being avid sailors, thought to start a sort of sailing club mostly to  share thoughts about how to do things on their boats, which were built  by Catalina.  At the time, with little internet, and not much published  material floating around, it was to be an information source, a place to  share ideas and solutions, how to set shroud tensions right, and proper  mast tuning, and a myriad of other topics.    It was decided to form a  club called the "Lake Conroe Catalina League".  Through the diligence of  these two, and with a year or two Bob Kotch joining in, other new  members began to join.  Gus, a World War 2 veteran, made it his personal  duty to lurk on the docks at 7 coves marina and button hole sail boat  owners, to invite them to join the club (the first time), and ask them  why they hadn't joined yet the second time, and imply that his patience  had worn thin if they hadn't joined the third time he saw them!   Membership fees were $10 per year then, if nothing else, not a bad  stipend to fork out just to get Gus off your back!

In those days,  the job of "running the show" was more of a "tag, you're it" sort of  arrangement.  Gus and Veit would sort of trade off being commodore, vice  commodore, secretary and treasurer, then Bob Kotch got stuck with all  four jobs for several year in a row after which he successfully conned  Mike Ferris into doing everything, and then Mike was stuck with it for  several years. We elected officers at the Christmas party like we do  now, but when the subject came up of who would be the new commodore  everyone in the crowd suddenly became deaf and mute,hoping the  embarrassing silence would eventually be broken by the sitting "commie"  volunteering to do "one more year".

Somewhere in the mid 90's, a  problem, if just in nomenclature, emerged, as all brands of perfectly  viable sailboats emerged other than Catalina, there were Hunters,  Rangers, MacGregors, Beneteau's, and the group through their dogged  determination had actually built a pretty fine club with a bad name.   Bob, Veit, Mike Ferris, and others took the helm as commodore, and in  time it was renamed the "Lake Conroe Sailing Association", a name it  still holds today.   The club quit using Gus's mimeograph machine to  publish it's club letter, with stencils typed judiciously by a  "secretary" Gus knew, to evolve to toner and ink on notoriously slow and  clunky printers at that time. publishing 4 newsletters a year in living  color for 4 events a year was not so bad, except it took a home printer  2 days to print it out.  In 1998 annual dues were raised to $20 per  year, despite protests that "no one can afford that!"  In 1999, Gus  declared that the internet was going to doom the club, because "no one  uses that computer stuff".  Yet we are still here, we are thriving, and  who knows, maybe we are just starting our 4th decade and will have  several decades more!".