Racing 2008
Paul Krutty, 2008 Race Chair
The racing was fun, the camaraderie was good and the weather cooperated.
The only thing keeping this racing program from being great is lack of participation.
If you know anyone who is on the fence about racing, please give them a shove in our direction. If you join the racing program, you know you will be able to enjoy your boat on Anchor Bay at least 12 times and if you race the invitational races that number can easily double.
It has been a pleasure being Race Chairman for the past two years and I thank the members for that opportunity.
The Race Chairmanship is being taken over by Steve Maynard who I am sure will just improve the program if we all give him a hand.
Thanks again and have a wonderful Holiday Season.
Paul Krutty “Sea Quell”
A note from our club Secretary and Treasurer
Greetings fellow CRCA members. Julie and I want to thank you for the opportunity to serve our association. We'll do our best to live up to your expectations. We look forward to seeing you at the Commodore's Ball. We want to wish all of you and your loved ones a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Healthy New Year.
Dave and Julie Otey “Compass Rose”
Racing 2009
Steve Maynard, 2009 Race Chair
With the 2008 racing season over, I want to thank Paul Krutty for his great work the last two years. As I just took over as Race Chair, the plans are still sketchy for the 2009 year (for me anyway). The 2009 schedule will be available in the March Catscan.
I have talked to Jim Rogers about meeting with us to cover the Race Committee duties. If you're interested, I'm sure we can also have him discuss the changes to the Racing Rules for 2009. They involve mark roundings and obstructions. Drop me an email if you would like me to schedule this.
If you have any suggestions for this year's program let me know.
Steve Maynard “Trillium”
CLEAR SAILING
By Lorenzo Caricchio
Wrapped like a mummy in damp swaddling, clammy windings restricting me to hesitant, fumbling movements, the murky shroud limiting my vision to the very large and the very near, this fog was squeezing the life out of me.
For days, the islands that define the Maine coastline had appeared from, and then vanished into the gray sameness, like passing thoughts or lost opportunities. When the misty vagueness first appeared it was pleasant, numbing, like a familiar routine; protective like a steady job, it dulled the sharp edges of the world and muffled the noises of the surrounding wildlife. But now the gray fog, like the grayness of time that had crept through my hair and beard, threatened to confine me to an ever-shrinking world that would eventually, I feared, have no room in it for me.
I had hoped that this vacation would be more than just scenery, landmarks and too many bourbons after dinner. I wanted it to be different. I didn’t know how exactly, just a yearning for things to be realer, for life to have that new car smell again. Maybe that was why I chose to sail the coast of Maine in late September aboard the J&E Riggin. The Riggin is an old ninety foot Oysterman Schooner built in the 1800’s that had been converted to a passenger vessel. Her skipper, a man of my age, height and build who’s career fit him like a piece of well worn clothing, had rescued her bones from a shoal where she had been run aground and abandoned, half in and half out of the water, to be torn apart by competing forces of nature. Were there lessons to be learned from her resurrection? Perhaps the lives and dreams of men who worked her decks and slept in her bunks were absorbed into the aged keel. Perhaps, under full sail, the creaking of her old wooden ribs against the newer planking of her hull would whisper the secrets of life. Perhaps I would never get to know these things because of this damn mind numbing, joint aching, and wind stealing fog!
On the third morning at sea, anchored next to an unseen island, I stood on deck in the dank, motionless air that chilled my lungs and thickened my blood. My hands wrapped, for warmth, around a steaming cup of coffee, as I watched the moist, gauze wind itself tighter around the top of the schooner’s masts and the tip of her bowsprit. My desire to raise sail and run free smoldered under the wet blanket of fog. Mentally I cursed as I paced the misty deck – “I want to sail damn it! I’m tired of waiting” The heat of my rising anger dispersed some of the chill in the morning air. Then a deep-throated rumble of thunder, like the voice of God, tore through the soggy curtain and interrupted my internal ranting. The weather was about to change.
I set my half empty mug of coffee on the cabin top and rushed below, fumbled into foul weather gear and was back