High Tidings, January-February 2022

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Commodore’s Remarks

Happy New Year! It is hard to believe that we are already working on the calendar for next year. Dues have been emailed. If you have not received your invoice, contact John Waanders, Club Treasurer. Be sure to return the volunteer sheet. Remember that we are a volunteer club and that is how we keep our dues low. If you are not able to volunteer, you have the option to submit an extra donation that will be used to keep the Club rolling!

New Members. -

Please join me in welcoming the following new members:

  • Tom and Julie Tydeman

  • Skip Haskin and Gilliam Belnap

  • Lucy Driggs-Armstrong and Mike Armstrong

  • Peter and Michelle Corliss

  • Greg and Melissa Clark

I think that 2022 is going to be a great year in terms of membership. In addition to our new members, we have several others that are currently going through the new member process.

Tuesday Night Seminars

We are looking to expand our programming this year with Tuesday evening yachting seminars. Many of our members are very talented and we hope that they will be able to run some of these seminars. We are planning a casual and interactive series with topics such as:

• Anchoring

• Stocking the boat

• Boat maintenance

• Marine radios

• etc.

Send me your ideas and we will try to put together a great program

Launch Operator Licenses

Congratulations to Mark Raffa and David Chan who took the Launch Operators Course in December. This year we hope to be able to supplement our Launch Operations with some volunteers. Many clubs are having a difficult time filling their launch schedules and are supplementing the schedule with Club Volunteers. If you are interested in the class, check these resources:

• https://boatwise.com/upcoming-classes

• https://www.nemaritime.com/launchtender.html

If you take the course and volunteer 21 hours, the Club will reimburse you for the course. If you volunteer another 5 hours, the Club will reimburse the first aid class as well.

Opportunities to help

At the start of every year, we have positions open. Please review the following list and let me know how you can help. If you are new to the Club, signing up to volunteer is the easiest way to meet other members and get involved. Everyone should be signing up for Activities! Check out the ways you can help the club:

Club Racing

First, I would like to thank Rob Hathaway for all his help over the years with the running of the Outer Light and Thursday Night Racing. Rob has decided to step down from his position - don’t worry Thursday sailors, Rob will still be the Committee boat. However, this leaves a gap in the management of the these programs.

We’re looking for:

  • Thursday Night Racing Director: communicate weather cancellations, keep track of scores, manage Jon Mason’s protests, update newsletter (with photos)

  • Outer Light Racing Director: Attend ECSA meetings and publish race info in yacht scoring while working with the Outer Light Party Committee.

Sincerely,

Caroline Miller, Commodore

Vice Commodore’s Remarks

Happy Winter! Wish there was more snow up North for skiing on but these mild temps on the coastline have been nice.

We finally had a couple days of deep freeze Jan 9 & 10th and the cove starting icing up. The Iceaway propellers have been deployed with on/off thermostats and are working well to protect the waterfront docks as well as the Old Saybrook’s town dock stored there for a fee. The thermostats turn on at 25 degrees air temp and then off at 34 degrees so if you don’t see them running and it’s, say, 28 degrees out that’s why. They came from the company that sells the “Ice Away” props so guess they know what they’re doing. If by chance you’re there and ice has formed and they are not running please let me know, as it may be a tripped breaker or other issue we need to resolve.

Replacement of all the clubhouse old interior light fixtures with LED units has been completed thanks to the skills of Dan Ferrier and his apprentices Chris Bazinet and myself. We expect to see a savings on our electric bill next year and the club interior has a new feel with the settings used for light frequency color and brightness compared with the old sterile environment fluorescent fixtures.

With our dues invoices you should see a sign-up sheet for types of volunteer work you would be interested in helping out with. Our committee chair people use this information to seek out assistance needed during the year. It’s much more effective to have a target group to contact in lieu of polling the entire membership for help. Please give it some thought and check the area you have interest in pitching in.

Thanks!

Lou Vinciguerra

Vice Commodore

louvinci@gmail.

Activities Report

Happy New Year! Many of you must be dreaming or longing of the boating season, of course. Don’t worry, Spring will be here before you know it. With viruses at a high level, we have put a pause on cold or cool weather gatherings until things ease up. But let us know of any ideas you may want to pursue once things look brighter.

Did someone say “St. Patrick's Day? We have had quite a few new members join NCYC–a great job by our Commodore and her Membership Committee. With that in mind, one thought being considered for the coming season is to dub the first social gathering evening “Welcome New Members”. The idea would be to have not-so-new members bring an extra place setting or two, and a few extra portions of food and we would not require the newest members to bring anything, except maybe their beverage of choice. One new family would sit with seasoned members and the seasoned members would find out all they could about the new members and then present them after dinner, to the group in attendance. Just a thought.

There is a tentative Activities virtual planning meeting at 0930 on March 19, 2022, please plan to tune in. The link will be sent out closer to the date.

When sending in your volunteer form, please consider joining the Activities committee. We welcome everyone and we mean everyone. We have several men who either have served or continue to serve on the committee and they are great to have on the team. Even if you don’t sign up for activities, you are always welcome to come to any and all of of our meetings. Stay warm and Happy! -Ann Chan

Send in your idea for a fun 2022 activity!

From the FLEET CAPTAIN

The 2022 Labor Day weekend cruise to Mystic Seaport is open for booking through Dockwa. Our Port Captain Peter Stump informs us that we will be docked at Lighthouse Point which is much closer to the dinghy racing venue. Please indicate that you are with NCYC so that we can be grouped together. Many thanks to Pete.

We will plan on having our initial cruise meeting in March. In the meantime, please feel free to email me your thoughts & suggestions for the 2022 cruises. More details to follow.

Best regards

David David-chan@concast.net

Junior Sailing Update

We expect to have another successful program this summer and registrations are currently open on the NCYC website for NCYC members and family (includes grandkids). Our registrar reports we have 6 spots filled to date. On February 1st we open the registrations to the public, so act fast if your kids need a particular session.

We are excited that three out of the four instructors have accepted job offers to return this summer. Amy, Damien and Alex. Jamie (in college now) is looking for internship and research opportunities. We will be advertising the open position soon.

The Junior Sailing Committee is always looking for members to assist in administration of the program like interview and selection committee for instructors, planning the summer program, support during the sessions and help with maintaining boats. If you have an interest, please let us know on the volunteer form that goes out with the dues and/or email me at louvinci@gmail.com.

We made one upgrade to our fleet of boats for this year, retired/sold one of the old light blue 420s that we picked up from Mass Maritime many years ago when we retired thesinking wood Blue Jays and started 420s in our program. The new-boat-to-us was actively raced by a family that belong to WYC in Stonington. The boat is rigged to fly spinnaker and ready to go!

Lou Vinciguerra

NCYC Junior Sailing Chairman

A Log Entry Journey

June 1980

By Deb Paulson

Cast of characters: Dad, age 48, open-ocean boating experience: Lieutenant Commander on the U.S.S. Fletcher. Deb, age 23, Craig, age 20, Scott, age 18. Open-ocean sailing experience: none.

Venue: “Delight” a Freedom 40 sailboat based in St. Thomas, which the cast intends to sail to Newport.

June 8

Three days out and I have stopped throwing up. This afternoon I slept well for the first time. Dad is trying to get weather on the radio. It is not coming in very clearly.

June 9

The wind is behind us, creating a “rock n’ roll” effect. Sleep, I am averaging between 4-5 hours. I washed my hair this morning with Scott helping by dumping buckets of sea water over my head. We are trying to figure out where we are. Somehow, it never seems to work out, no matter how many sextant readings we take. The auto-helm does the steering during the day mostly. At night we usually steer by hand.

June 10

We are doing 6-7 knots under what the book says is a “moderate breeze.” Seems pretty lively to me. Scott just took over my watch. After less than an hour of steering my arms and wrists really ache. We have only seen one ship in daylight. Craig saw the lights of one at night. A Navy plane buzzed us. Have seen a few birds and some flying fish. I am tired of feeling somewhat queasy every time I eat something, tired of not sleeping soundly, of wind and water, up and down. You get to a point, I think, before the second wind, when you are just worn out.

June 12

A little ask from the Editor:

Do you have a boating story that you’d like to share? I hope so. If you do, please send it to me and I will put it in the newsletter. Pictures, too. Thank you so much.

Deb Paulson, Editor