Happy Wild Weather Wednesday!  The only thing predictable in the last month was that it was going to rain.  If you made it a whole day without rain, then that was a great day.  I thought this was going to be one of those days, but I was sadly disappointed.  
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If someone up there didn’t want us to race this night he/she did a good job of discouraging us.  First, it starts to rain as we motor/sail to the starting area.  Then the rain quits and it looks like we are going to have some wind and they start the cruisers.  The cruisers make it halfway to the windward mark when the Melges 24’s start and then Wild Weather Wednesday showed its ugly face with a 60+ degree windshift followed by a complete shut down of the wind.   The RC abandoned the race at this juncture and I appreciate their announcement over the radio.  
 
Thank you to the RC committee volunteers, Jim Chambers, Randy Baker, Ken Blankenship, Bob Bumgarden, Linda Hoopes and John McCarthy.  They did a great job in recognizing that this evening was going to be painful, if allowed to continue.  
 
I want to remind everyone that we will have dinner served at LLSC clubhouse after the next race.  If you are docked at another marina, we invite you to park your boat at our ramp/guest docks and walk to the clubhouse for dinner.  Will Brown will be serving burgers and brats after this next race..  
 
Another reminder that we need more race committee volunteers and we would be also happy to accept volunteers to make a Wednesday dinner.
For RC, please contact Jonathan Stewart (770-598-4346), [email protected] or sign up on the website https://www.llsckeelboat.com/rcinfo.html.
 
See you on the race course,    Dana
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We sailors or should I say some sailors are made of very tough stuff.  The predictions for race time were not looking good and because we have had thunder/lightning every day for the last week, I was not sure how this evening would go.  But as I looked out over the water at 5-6 pm, conditions looked like they were going to be good this night.  
 
So I set a long course hoping the wind that was present at 6 pm would continue during the race.  It looked pretty good until the beginning of the pursuit starting sequence at 8pm and then it began to rain.   The wind started to fail as the night crawled on and the boats ended up short finishing at H.

Here is the order of the finishers:

1. Tedd Meinersmann
2. Lee Estes
3. Jim Chambers
4. David Steadman

 
 
The next and last Moonlight race will be on Saturday, Aug 21 with a 98% full moon with moonrise at 8:14pm.  I will send a reminder email the week before this last Summer race.
 
See you on the race course, Dana
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One of the best ways to understand all the signals and horns you hear on a race course is to volunteer to do race committee.  We had great weather conditions to train RC members on this evening and many of the volunteers had not seen a race from this perspective.   I would like to thank my crew, Heather Temske, Terra Bowers, Ann Howard, and Neil Harris.  I would also like to thank Leigh Ann Collier, Connor Flannagan, Greg Manning, Noah, Kathy, Maya, and Kelly for all their hard work.
 
I want to give a special thanks to our culinary specialist, Will Brown and his able UGA assistant, Rose Mazzotta.  They had the dubious pleasure of cooking the first meal in the kitchen in almost 1 ½ years.  They had to prewash everything, cook and then wash everything again.  They served a fabulous meal of spaghetti with meat sauce, penne pasta with alfredo sauce, salad, garlic bread and cookies.  I was very excited to see all the visitors at the guest docks that came to share the meal.   I enjoyed seeing the many new faces.  We will have brats and burgers in 2 weeks after race #5 on Wednesday, Aug 4.
 
I think most people were as surprised as me that we had such nice conditions this evening.  
I felt like Mother Nature gave us a nice present.  As we approached sunset the wind velocity increased, but then as soon as I began a starting sequence the wind direction began to clock in an easterly direction, turning my beautiful windward /leeward race course into a reach/ reach.  I think the big decision of the night was whether and how long to put up the spinnaker.  As so often happens, the wind conditions changed dramatically from the cruiser start to the start of fleet 4.  But I was quite happy that rain or storms did not mar our enjoyable evening.
 
See you next week,   Dana
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RC committee of Gary Umberger and Mark Turner did a good job of watching the weather and making the appropriate call of cancelling the race on this night.   It was exceptional that we have had 11 races without any serious weather issues until this last race before the break.  Though we all have to make our own decisions about whether to race, it helps when RC keeps our safety at the top of their list.
 
Once again, please contact Jonathan Stewart ([email protected]) if you would like to be primary or secondary race committee.  We have 8 more races to conduct.  If you are not experienced, Jonathan can pair you with someone who can take the lead.  
 
I look forward to seeing everyone at the next race and looking forward to the delicious dinner Will Brown will prepare for us after the race.     Dana 
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