Calling all 3rd Avenue sailors!

For years now, Tony Parsons who runs The Kite School has routinely assisted stranded sailors using his jet ski. While many of the folks who have been pulled out reciprocated by paying him a bit, not all do. Tony’s primarily been doing this because of his generosity and care for the community.

Two weeks ago, 5 sailors were pulled out by the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Marine Unit. (Tony contacted them.) Tony was in the process of helping but ran out of gas. (His jet ski has a faulty gauge.) It ended up taking up most of his afternoon, and then later it was a hassle to retrieve the ski from Coyote because the Marine Unit would not tow it to 3rd.

Over and above the pulling folks out, Tony’s is always improving the general community rigging/socializing area with any number of things such as the tent and chairs to improve 3rd for for use by all of our community (And of course he ends up taking complaints from a small number of folks…)

So… we are kicking off this Go Fund Me drive to support Tony. All the funds we raise will go to Tony. While nominally the funds are to support Tony’s jet ski expenses and continuing improvements to the cabana and rigging areas, all funds will be given to Tony with no strings or obligations on his part. In particular Tony can spend this money as he sees fit. He is under no obligation to pull us from the water or let us use his stuff, etc…

Jet skis are expensive. Prices vary all over the map, but a quality used unit can easily be $8000-$10,000. With that in mind, please consider making a donation of $75 to help us get to that range. However, ALL donations regardless of amount will be greatly appreciated.

As you consider making a donation, remember that supporting Tony is supporting ourselves. Every person he pulls out of the bay is one less person for either the Marine Unit or Coast Guard to pull out and helps keep them from trying to restrict/hassle us. Our large wind sports community uses the community area (cabana, chairs, flag, etc) every day to socialize and hang out, and Tony makes great improvements every year out of his pocket.

We’ll run the drive until September 13th, and then set a date on the weekend to jointly give Tony the check.

Over the last 2 weeks, we’ve tried to socialize this on email and at 3rd. So far all the feedback has been very positive. We also mentioned it to Tony - he really didn’t expect us to do this, but he was certainly appreciative of the initiative.

If you have questions/concerns, please talk to one of us...

Donating $75 to the GoFundMe campaign will allow us to reach our goal:

=> Be sure to set "Tip GoFundMe services" to $0 with "Enter Custom Tip"

Owain Chilton is collecting the funds on behalf of the Baylands JetSki and Rigging Area Support Fund campaign.

This effort is being organized by:

Mark Keenan, Mark Tischler, Owain Chilton, Steve Gunn

Thanks for your help!