MEET THE SUMMER SAILSTICE TEAM!

Summer Sailstice was founded in February 2001 by John Arndt, as the global, annual celebration of sailing held on the summer solstice.

The annual Summer Sailstice sailing event is free to all participants and has grown from 200 boats signed up in 2001 to almost 4,000 boats today. Since many sailors join in the fun on boats signed up at www.SummerSailstice.com, the actual number of Summer Sailstice sailors is estimated at between 14,000 annually.

About Founder: John Arndt

John Arndt is Associate Publisher at Latitude 38, a premier West Coast sailing publication. John spent three years on the Northern California Marine Association Board and six years on the Sail America Board. John learned to sail from his parents who taught him in small boats (Snark, Turnabout, Penguin, 420, Rhodes 19) on the Maine coast and has continued to sail ever since then. John’s lifelong passion for the sailing lifestyle has involved thousands of miles of racing and cruising, plus 21 years spent professionally in the sailing industry. His sailing experience includes several Bermuda races, One Design racing, Collegiate racing, two winter seasons cruising the Caribbean, sailing in Europe and the Mediterranean plus lots of sunny afternoon sails aboard all kinds of boats in San Francisco Bay.

John’s wife, Leslie and his two daughters, Sarah and Hannah, sail their 1974 Ranger 33 'Summer Sailstice', recently painted 'Stars & Stripes' blue by Berkeley Marine Center, and their DeWitt dinghy from the Corinthian Yacht Club in Tiburon on San Francisco Bay whenever they can. You can contact John at john@summersailstice.com.

The Summer Sailstice Team

Summer Sailstice wouldn’t have been possible without the help and contributions of many others who’ve been inspired by John’s vision of a global holiday for sailors.

Among those who’ve provided invaluable help to the growth of Summer Sailstice:

Michelle Slade

Michelle jumped aboard as co-founder in 2001 when the event was just a dream(or crazy idea). Her high energy and enthusiasm helped ignite a fire under this idea and bring it to reality. Michelle helped by creating all the initial messaging, publicity launches and developed the initial Summer Sailstice website which gave our community of sailors a place to ‘meet’. She continued to help while also serving as a successful PR agent for the America’s Cup in New Zealand, part of the Alinghi PR team and managing other, always fun, sailing PR assignments. Besides being recently married, she’s currently working with Matt Jones on San Francisco Bay to develop San Francisco Speed Week (http://www.sanfranciscospeed.com).

Annie Ellicott

A high-spirited marketing guru and web saavy consultant, Annie’s enthusiasm, energy, organizational skills and plain hard work have all contributed to the fun and success of Summer Sailstice. She translates our English into English (that you can and want to read) in our newsletters, website, press releases and collateral as well as channeling our scrambled marketing thoughts into clear directions and action. A frequent crew member on our Ranger 33 and numerous other vessels on the Bay, Annie loves to get on the water either under sail or by raft in Class V whitewater rapids. To learn more about her other marketing and web success stories, visit http://www.leapup.com.

Scott Jackson

A sailing and graphic design specialist, Scott has created the art for many of our t-shirts, burgees, posters and other materials. He spends his weekends (and more) sailing time aboard his Moore 24 or Hylas 54 and occasionally helps us around the beer can course in local races on our Ranger 33. Scott continues to generously contribute his talented creative skills to seriously upgrade our own amateur efforts. To see his portfolio, visit http://www.scottjacksonportfolio.com.

Doris Kalin Walker

Doris has saved the day many times for Summer Sailstice. Doris’s contributions include our initial Summer Sailstice logo as well as the first artwork, advertising creative and numerous other graphic pieces needed to help move our sailing holiday ahead. She works with many Bay Area clients, many of them in the marine industry, providing website designs, print brochures and advertising designs.

Julie St. Louis

Julie also jumped in as prize administrator for Summer Sailstice. You should get to know her…if you’re going to win the Moorings charter, she’s the one picking the names from the digital ‘hat’! Julie also manages our online shop, fulfills all our online orders and supports many ongoing operational requirements for our store and prize solicitation and management with sponsors. Julie can be reached at Julie@summersailstice.com.

Diana Griffin

Diana has also been fantastic help in keeping our webstore operating and content updated. As our website has grown, there seem to be an unending number of gremlins that mysteriously hide out but need constant updating and revision. Diana patiently waits for us to get her the proper information before almost instantly posting it on the site. Kudos to Diana!

Caffeine - Bill Mulligan

Thanks to Bill! Like everyone else on the Summer Sailstice team, Bill is a busy guy, an active sailor and spends at least part of his professional time designing websites in the sailing industry. Caffeine, his web development company, developed the website for Vanguard boats, Sail America and has contributed his and his staff’s time to upgrading the features on the Summer Sailstice site. You can see more about Caffeine’s creations at http://www.getcaffeinated.com.

Paul Martson

An avid sailor who’s sailed and owned everything from Moore 24s to Vagabond 47s to (now) a Corsair trimaran, Paul was one of the web gurus who initially helped straighten out our misperceptions about the web… and spent hours creating webpages and teaching us how to help ourselves start up online. We’ve come a long way Paul!

Joseph Oster

Joseph is another Bay Area multihull sailor and one of the best web programmers with whom we’ve had the pleasure to work. A technical understanding of the web was not part of the ‘start-up’ tool kit at Summer Sailstice in our early days and Joseph translated much of our vague notions about online functionality into practical html code. While we still continue to swim around on most technical issues, thanks to Joseph our online efforts have turned into workable sign up and communications features on our website. You can see more of Joseph’s sailing and programming success at http://www.wingo.com or http://www.sfbama.org.

It’s not a big surprise but just about everyone on this page gets their feet wet once and a while from a wave over the rail. Thanks to so many friends and supporters who’ve helped Summer Sailstice over the years!