Morning Star Racing

From Michael Wagner

I just love the sounds of our club on Thursday evenings. It usually starts around five o’clock, as long-time friends begin rolling into the parking lot one by one and make their way into the clubhouse, greeting one another and catching up on what’s new. Within a short time, the bar in the Burgee Lounge is crowded, the noise level is elevated to a healthy roar, and continues to build with each new arrival. April and Kim are dashing back and forth to keep up with the drink orders, adding the sounds of glassware, fluidics and fizz to the mix.

Outside the noise level is on the rise too, like tonight when 11 Junior sailors began assembling their boats for a race. There’s the clanging of spars and booms, the clunks of centerboards and rudders, and the raw sounds of unbridled enthusiam as everyone hurries their pace to be one of the first out on the water. And of course, there’s always the parents reminding someone to put on their lifejacket or find their shoes.

The next wave is a steady stream of adults hauling sails and gear bags, comparing viewpoints on whether the wind is going to stay or drop, whether we’re going to get a thunderstorm or not, and what is being ordered for dinner. By this time, the Burgee Lounge is packed, with noise of a happy crowd leaking out each time a door is opened when April comes out to check up on the early outside diners.

The decibel level must drop a bit about 6:20 since the kids are out on the water and the keel boat sailors have headed out on the docks, but I can’t be sure, since I’m with them. But when we all come back as the Sun sets, its nothing short of pandemonium. The Burgee Lounge is still in full roar, there’s not a seat to be had outside, so additional chairs are flowing out of the ballroom, along with food trays, silverware and glasses. April’s running around like a crazy person trying to figure out where everyone is sitting, and its all being played out against a backdrop of laughter from about 20 kids playing tag or other games on the lawn. Sometimes its tough to even have a conversation with someone sitting right next to you. Like I said, I love the sounds of our club on Thursday evenings.

Tonight, we had a nice breeze that unfortunately all but fizzled shortly after we headed out to sail. The big crowd of Junior sailors got the better end of the wind, starting a bit before the keelboats. We had 9 boats out to race, but only 3 were able to finish. The Hergans on Morning Star had their usual large crowd of kids sailing, and once again, smoked everyone. Dobbs and Suzanne Fryberger on Whimsey also did very well, sailing in second place boat-for-boat which was impressive. Joanne Veater showed up to crew, but was easily persuaded to take Therapy out on her own, snagging Alex Razzook and John Murch to assist her, and finished in third. Yeah Joanne! That will teach Nigel to not show up.

Tonight’s results are attached. We still have 2 more Thursday Night races to go in the series.

I am just hoping the the engine will run…

Carbs rebuilt
New plugs
New switch box
New trigger
New rectifier
New stator

My 90hp Mariner outboard has no power and won’t rev over 2700 rpms.

from Michael Wagner

While none of us are very happy when the Northeast river is windless, I get equally grumpy when it blows from the East. With a fixed geography oriented North/South, its always a challenge to pick a course, and you are never sure how long what little wind there is will last, and I guessed wrong last night. But like I’ve been saying all Summer, its always better to be out on the water on Thursday night than running the risk of falling off the couch at home.

If I didn’t know better, it would be easy to imagine Ron and Justine Roecker have some type of silent running stealth engine running under Swan. As the rest of us are creeping along towards the start line of our race, here they come, cutting thru the rest of the fleet like a hot knife to butter. And with the highest handicap number in the fleet, we all need to be significantly ahead of Swan to be considered doing well, so its bad news when Ron and Justine are nipping at your heels. For the entire first leg of our course, we just couldn’t shake them, and neither could anyone else. Morning Star and Solaris finally made a little distance by the time we reached the first mark, and Victoria, La Perla Azul, Whimsey and Swan all rounded shortly behind with just seconds between them. The positions seemed to trade back and forth several times on the next 2 legs, but it appeared that the Northeast river’s version of the Bermuda Triangle swallowed a few of the boats while heading back to our next mark because they just disappeared for a while. Then we heard a hail on the radio from Swan stating that they were “retiring”. For those who don’t know, that’s polite Justinespeak for “I think I’ve had enough of this, Ron is hungry, and we go to bed early and don’t want to be out here all night”. The Ronalds on La Perla Azul and Wilson King on Victoria caught the translation quickly and caved in too. Of course, the announcements from shore that everyone’s restaurant orders were flying out of the kitchen didn’t help either, so the evening’s end was rather anticlimactic. At least we didn’t get rained on or blasted by 35 knot winds.

We also had a nice sized group of Junior sailors out on Optis and Lasers. They’ve all said they will keep coming on Thursdays until school starts, and encourage others to come out and join them for the next few weeks

Looks like wind!

I spent two years sailing her around the Chesapeake. Lots of great memories.

I’ve known for weeks that Solaris wouldn’t be sailing on July 12th. With 10 kids and boats in Baltimore for a Junior Regatta, getting packed up and returning to NERYC in time to sail just wasn’t going to happen, so July 12th would be a throw-out night.

However, by some miracle, there wasn’t any traffic leaving Baltimore yesterday, and it began to look like we could actually roll into North East by 5:30pm. So my first call was to Sharlene Wilkins who was just wrapping up the week’s camp activities to see if there was any wind. No sense in hurrying to just sit and broil. There was a building breeze! Call 2 was to Stephanie – radios, GPS timer and other essential items were all at home, not on the boat. Then there was a matter of crew. I didn’t have any because we hadn’t planned to sail. Rachel said she would go, but only if she got to skipper ( I guess 2 days of Laser racing wasn’t enough for her). Sweet was with us, and was easily bribed with the promise of chicken fingers and fries after the race. (Skylor is an Opti sailor, and is frequently concerned there won’t be enough racing on any given day, so I figured he would be an easy recruit).

So, things were looking unexpectedly up, and we arrived at NERYC right on time as did 5 other groups of sailors, and we all enjoyed the best Thursday night we’ve had this season. The breeze was nice and stayed up for the duration of the race, the temperature and humidity were low (for July), and the bugs seemed to be on vacation.

Things started right on time, although there was quite a bit of excitement on Morning Star about a 90 seconds before the start when their headsail came crashing down on the deck due to a broken halyard . We all were amazed they didn’t miss a beat and recovered almost instantly, putting it back up using the Spinnaker halyard, and then had great start. Sydney made her first trip ever up the mast when things were all over to retrieve the halyard and entertain the diners on the patio, and reported “That was SO cool”.

And once again, that strange phenomenon of NERYC being the center of the universe played out once more. Van Downing showed up looking to crew, and sailed with Wilson King and his friend on Victoria. Van and Wilson had never met until last night, and discovered that Van and Wilson’s wife Vicky are childhood friends.