Bob Astrove has been instrumental in helping to build community within the Lightning Class for many years. He has worked tirelessly to create and maintain, prod and nurture, the Classic Boat group. This is an online gathering place that has fostered a tremendous sense of community and resulted in many boats (and gear) changing hands, being restored and getting back out onto the water. It has already been a great feeder for the GOT-Flashes program.

But the Classic Boat group is not just virtual. The classic boat gathering at Keuka Lake in late June every year is going strong, 10 or 15 years on. And since 2023, the annual classic boat workshop created by Bob has recanvassed decks, built tooling that helps manage raising masts, built rub rails, fashioned plaques out of unused wooden boat transoms and has taken on other projects. In 2026 the workshop will repair and enhance boats owned by the Finger Lakes Boating Museum, and will also prep the physical space there for the upcoming Lighting Hall of Fame. These boat-related activities are supplemented with a healthy dose of camaraderie and social activities.

When the LOYALS formed in 2024, this individual quickly became a part of the core group, raising his hand to provide ideas, to plan and to act. He helped create the volunteer survey, called fleet captains and district commodores, researched the website Forum capability and created the first Forum for fleet and district leaders. He created great documentation to help people be successful joining and using the forum. And then researched Google Groups and set one up to facilitate communications amongst all the LOYALS.

Bob researched the ability to use text messaging to communicate with our members. And created documentation to teach people how to sign up for text messaging. The result is we now send out texts to those signed up for it.

In 2024, Dave Starck presented Bob Astrove with the inaugural Lightning Class Volunteer of the Year award. Has that caused Bob to rest on his laurels? No! Since then, Bob has led an effort to improve the Class website, starting with an upgrade to the menus. He was instrumental in making all 667 issues and 9300 articles of Flashes searchable online. Bob is currently working on finding a way to index and make searchable all 80 of the Lightning Class Yearbooks. He is leading the effort to make the Lightning Hall of Fame come to life. And he is implementing a solution for self-service volunteer recognition.

Be like Bob Astrove!

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