Apologies for the short write up this week, my last couple of weeks have been full of travel with the exception of Wednesday nights. At the moment, I'm in New Jersey for the Thistle Nationals. (No, I don't really fit on a thistle so good..). However, best of luck to our fleet members Caroline Speir, Marten Kendrick, and Wheler Sutton as they try their hand at dinghy sailing this week! You may not realize it, but our fleet is full of well traveled sailors and some very competitive ones at that. Ask around and you'll hear some pretty wild stories at our dinners!

Speaking of dinner, there is dinner this week! But we are still looking for some more volunteers for dinner this series. Please reach out to Jonathan or Will Brown if you're interested in helping, they can coach you through it!

As always let me know if there are any corrections!

Thank you, 
Kyle
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Hey y'all sorry for the delay on scores this week! I unfortunately had a lot of late nights at work this week and have let some of my non work tasks slip.

It was a crazy week in a lot more than just me being busy. We've had plenty of heavy thunderstorms this week (fun fact, my building at work was struck by lightning on monday, kinda wild), some big assasination attempt, and a global IT outage.

I'll try not to bore you with the news too much, because that's part of why we all come to Wednesday nights. We want to unplug from the chaos of the world. It's becoming increasingly difficult to unplug lately. I think a lot of people are taking notice of that following the IT issues many experienced this week. Sailing, however, is very analog. Some of y'all may have some fancy autopilot on board or some electronic compasses, but if the electronics were fried, we could all still sail. In fact, we could still sail in races. A whiteboard and some flags is all we need to pull off a race. 

Heck we proved it this week. The storms caused increased traffic this wednesday with traffic lights being out, and people trying to drive in reduced visibility. We didn't shove off the dock until after 7:00. But as we approached we could see the flags going up and down and recognized our sequence. We started right at the boat as soon as we got there and read the course on our way across the line. No VHF on, no watch running, but we figured it out with the old school flags, and sailed off into a beautiful breeze, completely unplugged from the world as we know it, but blissfully in connection with our surroundings via the purely mechanical systems of a sailboat. Very literally a solid mechanical connection with nature. No dependency on electronics, just some ropes and a wooden stick we call a tiller.

Somehow Wednesday nights deliver sanity in the chaos every week. Some higher power allows us to sail every week. Call it divine intervention, the wind gods watching out for you, or just Dana and Daniel doing wind dances, whatever it is it works. Wednesday is often the magic day. The skies parted this week to give us just enough time to enjoy a full-length course in a beautiful westerly breeze. And we all got to enjoy a wonderful night of sailing free from the chaos of the world and the binds of technology. Boy am I thankful for it, because the rest of my week was unfortunately very plugged in. 

This week we thank RC led by Brent McKenzie and Ryan Jones for allowing us to unplug! 

There should be dinner next week, but we still need volunteers to help us out for a lot of the series 2 dinners. Please reach out to any of the officers if you are interested in helping! All costs are fully reimbursed by the fleet.

As always let me know if there are any corrections!

Thank you, 
Kyle
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We're back baby! While I thoroughly enjoyed shouting "USA! USA! USA!" over the holiday break, it didn't quite scratch the same itch as shouting "TRIM! TRIM! TRIM!" at Papa Doug on a Wednesday night. As an all-knowing skipper, I definitely needed to get that out of my system. (Just kidding, try to be nice to your crew and your boat. You'll reap the benefits later)

In all seriousness, this week was an awesome way to kick off series 2! We had a great breeze and a lengthy course to match! I always love a long race, but it was especially enjoyable after the hiatus from racing! Thanks to RC led by Jeff Freeman and Dennis Terrell, with help from Cathy Freeman, Mike Tatteris, Pat Finnik, Tom Telinski, and Ava!

Everyone wants to get off to a good start to the series, and it was apparent this week with very competitive starts! You don't want to set yourself behind the others in your fleet too early in the series. However, sometimes starting fast is not what ensures that. The aggressive starts led to a lot of boats being over early this week. Sometimes the best way to get a good start is to not set yourself behind. Minimize the risk and then you don't have to dig yourself out of a hole.

The Melges series 1 champs, Ex-Kahn find themselves scoring OCS after week 1, setting themselves behind Davis who's now jumped to the early lead (he asked me to shout out that his boat is for sale if you're interested in buying a race winner). However, talking to Mike Harrington after the race, he told me that he was a minute late to the start, but still managed to keep his hot streak alive and put another flyer on the cruiser fleet. 1 minute late to the start definitely sounds a lot better than OCS.

Much of sailing is risk management. Don't set yourself too far behind and you've always got a shot. If you're ahead, use your lead to cover the fleet rather than chasing a puff on the horizon (the Ex-Kahn team is usually very good at this). But, I can't say I haven't enjoyed the thrill of picking the right corner of the course to go all the way to. My advice is keep it clean, but don't forget to have fun ;)

We also need to thank our culinary volunteers led by Will Brown for some phenomenal tacos this week! Please note we still need volunteers to prepare 4 more dinners through series 2. Reach out to WIll Brown or any of the officers if you are interested. All costs for preparing the dinner are reimbursed by the fleet!

For those of you that believed my ruse about the file corruption of Mr. MacLeod's sail plans, never fear! I accidentally attached the final results to the email which were supposed to be a surprise for the awards ceremony and this was my attempted cover story. 

Thanks to Brendon and Linda for capturing the two pics above of the sporty conditions! You can see more pics from them in the Facebook Group. 

As always, let me know if there are any corrections needed. See you all next week!

Thank you,
Kyle
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