May Newsletter
This past month the boat yards have come alive again, bottoms are painted, boats are in the water and rig tuning is at a feverous pitch. A big thank you goes out to Pete Fluhr, Colin Mills and both their crews for setting all the marks over Mothers Day weekend. All the marks are on station and ready to be raced around. There are new coordinates for L mark, 2 miles north east of S mark. They are North 41.48.31 and West 81.12.98. Racers please make a note of it. The coordinates will also be on the website and the official board at the sailing center.
Rear Commodore Ray and Diane have been quite successful at finding a new place for us to meet after the racing on Wednesday nights. Blazin Bills will welcome GRSC members and crew with weekly specials, so that we can get in and fed quickly enough to share some stories of the nights racing. Cruising members, please feel free to come out and join the after race festivities. Please show your support and thanks to Ray by attending what should be a fun event after Wednesday night racing. A menu with weekly specials is included in this news letter. I am especially fond of Bucket of Beer night on June 8th. Should we have to finish the beer before we can finish the race, or should we have to drink the beer between the 1 minute gun and start before we can go over the starting line? It shouldn’t be hard to find crew that night! Many years ago while I was crewing on a boat from Grand River Sailing club, it was the fun exciting atmosphere of Wednesday night racing and after-race socializing that helped my father and I decided to join this great club when we bought a boat. As club members, we never know where our next boat owner is going to come from, do we? It is also a great opportunity for crew members to interact and bring non sailing friends out to try boat racing. Sustaining membership and growth is in every member’s best interest.
Speaking of membership, please re-welcome past GRSC member, Carol Nottage, back to the club. Carol is looking for a crewing opportunity. Cathy Newpher’s newly formed membership committee shared some of her committee’s ideas at the May board meeting. We should start to see some of the results from this new committee soon. Please contact Cathy with your ideas for membership.
Now, let us turn our attention and energies to the Hospice Regatta. Regatta chair Louise Mills has her very own website so please contact her to volunteer and help plan this big event at Regatta@grsc.net.
During the Spring ILYA meeting, it was announced that West Marine has become a major sponsor of Bay Week. Furthermore, the town of Put-In-Bay, which suffered tourism problems at the end of the season last year, has also contributed money for the Bay Week experience. In the past, ILYA’s Bay Week regattas have taken up two weekends of dockage at the bay. This year, in an effort to reduce costs for everyone, only one weekend will be used. The power boats will use Thursday – Sunday, and will be out before the Detroit, Toledo, and Sandusky sailboats arrive later on Sunday. More dockage space will be available for those finishing the Cleveland Deepwater Saturday morning. More sponsorship means more awards, gifts and parties. The sailors and power boats will meet for rum night Saturday night, and another party is set for Monday night to award all Deepwater awards as in the past. Efforts are continuing to make Bay Week a ‘must’ on everyone’s schedule again.
During the ILYA meeting, a guest speaker from Ray Marine was there to talk about the new radios coming on the market for 2006. Unfortunately, the Coast Guard has been sent out on too many costly false calls for distress. Begin in 2006, the new boat radios that we buy will identify us, our boat name and our location. This information will all be gathered when someone purchases one of these new radios. This would be very similar to the old FCC license.
Past commodore of ILYA, Dennis Mintus, gave a brief report on the Boating Association of Ohio. In brief, it is astounding how bureaucracy keeps inventing ways to tax the boating community. Fuel tax, harbor tax, license to operate a boat, fishing licenses, public ramps, a fee to park at state parks (i.e. Edgewater state park), etc. Yet very little of the money that they want to take out of the boating community is used to support the boating community. We just have to look at Edgewater and Lakesides issues with the city of Cleveland to know how crazy government has become. The Boating Association of Ohio is looking out for our best interests.
Interesting things happen in the boat yard after a long cold winter…
First, it appears that Paul Mathews is behind on his Diesel Assembly 101 class.
Thriller has a replacement mast and is ready to go. Have the new rig and sails been measured?
Will Wild Things 3rd bottom in as many years be the ‘end all-be all’? Third time is the charm, right?
Louise Mills is becoming quite the boat rigger. Wish lost a tracer for the main halyard over the winter and had to rerun the halyard. This is not an easy feat on a fractional boat, so Louise went up Adrenalin’s mast, and then had Wish’s and Adrenalin’s masts pulled together so she could climb over and install the main halyard on Wish. Well, it went so fast and so well that someone down bellow pulled the new halyard all the way back out, so Louise could repeat the feat.
Another great mast rigger, Joyce Jentoft, also had to go up the mast for a main halyard. Apparently, in order to tune a J 35 mast, the main halyard has to be taken all the way up the mast. Of course the rigging tape to use during this exercise has to be from two years ago, so that once the measuring tape is secured with old rigging tape to the halyard and haul up the mast, you will get one good measurement before the halyard and measuring tape part. It would have been no effort at all winching agile mast climber Joyce up the mast, except for 5 minutes prior, yours truly had just winched Neil up the mast to install the running backstays! In all fairness, I would like to thank the Jentofts and Colin Mills for helping step Unbridled’s mast at the sailing center that day.
Here is a really weird thing that happened to me. We took Unbridled to the Annapolis NOODs to race in one of the toughest J105 fleets, and in some of the most challenging tide conditions (that’s our story and we’re sticking to it!). On our way home, driving on interstate 68 through the mountains of West Virginia, with oversize permits in hand, (truck, trailer, boat and mast are fifty eight feet long, eleven and a half feet wide and thirteen feet high, with a combined weight of 17,800 pounds), we were going down hill at seventy miles an hour, and got passed by a house! It was bad enough getting beat up at the NOOD regatta, and then we got rolled by a house.
See you on the water,
Robert Mock
Grand River Sailing Club Cruising Schedule
June 18, 2005 Picnic @ Sailing Center Ron Toivonen
July 14-17, 2005 Cruise to Erieau Past Commodore Phil Dolsen
August 17-21, 2005 Cruise to Port Stanley George Schlauch
September 3-5, 2005 Labor Day Cruise to Erieau Past Commodore Phil Dolsen
October 1, 2005 Clambake @ GRYC Del & Becky Gladrow
Blazin Bills Wednesday Night Specials just for GRSC
May 18 - Burger Night- $4.50 (with fries)
May 25 - Free appetizer (onion ring loaf, broccoli bits or chicken tenders)
June 1 - Soup & sandwich night $6.95
June 8 - Bucket of beer night $9.00
Other items on the menu
Chicken wings (mild, hot, or buffalo) BBQ pork sandwich
Blazin’ Hamburger (with or without cheese) 1/3 baby back rib snack (3-4 bones)
Breast of chicken sandwich Blazin Bill’s salad(boneless chicken breast)
Perch sandwich New England clam chowder
French Onion soup
Grand River Sailing Club
P.O. Box 607
Grand River, Ohio 44045