Fwd: NWMA Last Night's Meeting Minutes
Vincent DePillis
From: Eric 1207 <eric1...@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Jan 7, 2026 at 12:38 PM
Subject: NWMA Last Night's Meeting Minutes
To: Jessica Aarhaus <jaar...@gmail.com>, Vincent DePillis <vincent....@gmail.com>
NWMA Meeting Minutes Jan. 6, 2026
As always our meeting started at 6:15ish with a potluck and meet and greet session. There were about 15 of us gathered and several more on zoom. A few members we don’t see often were there and it was nice to see and chat with them.
At 7 pm Jeff O rang the commodore bell to end the visiting and start our presentation. Commodore Vince was present but I think Jeff couldn’t wait any longer to hear what cool things our presenter Bill Q had to show and tell.
There was no club business discussed, though the Board will have a meeting next week to chart the coming year’s course. Treasurer Mark was not present so no financial report, but having a thorough discussion of the budget just before Christmas there would have been very little if any financial activity over the holiday. Vince started off our custom of going around the room to introduce ourselves, our boats, and any boaty things we’ve been up to.
We jumped directly into member, Bill Q’s mad scientist creations of cheap diy chart plotter, boat control, wind instrument stuff from off the shelf electronic widgets. I’ve heard of this Pi thing that seemed to be the brain of it all and could accept all kinds of add ons. Bill explained it can do things like control your autopilot, display VMG, wind characteristics, AIS and everything derived from those inputs, and probably more that I didn’t catch or comprehend. All in all, it was a good, understandable intro to what can be done diy with inexpensive components. Very impressive capabilities. The presentation was recorded and should appear on our Utube channel for those that missed it.