Dear Friend of CHARIAD:
CHARIAD in the News
The Globe ran a long article about CHARIAD’s sailing in the overnight race from Marblehead to Provincetown – the Beringer Race. The article was written by Regina Flynn who has been a huge supporter of the boat and the crew. I am not sure if the article was in the printed edition of the paper or just on line.
The irony in this article is that this was the first summer in at least 10 years that CHARIAD did not participate in the Beringer race because we could not get her out of the boat yard. The same irony in the Buzzards Bay Regatta featuring CHARIAD in their promotion of the racing but we could not participate for the same reason.
New England Championship Regatta
The CHARIAD crew had a very successful three day outing at the New England PHRF Championship Regatta from Marblehead. We are measuring success by the enormous progress in our sailing proficiency over the three days and the feeling by everyone on board that we had really come together as a boat and a crew by the end of the regatta.
The PHRF Championship is the largest and most competitive regatta that we usually sail. All of the boats have had months of racing and their top crews on board. Sailing professionals are crewing some of the boats we race against. To say that we were not sailing up to our potential with only one day of racing this summer is an understatement.
I know we felt some frustration on Friday – the first day of racing. But our performance was much better by the end of the day. We were on the water 11 hours on Friday. Saturday morning, we added a shackle to lengthen the forestay – more finding the missing pieces of the boat and re-installing them. Because we have new standing rigging, the length of the forestay and backstay is not quite right. Probably more adjustments will be needed as we sail the boat more.
While we did not place well in the fleet in the final tally, we did beat the class winner, Hot Spur, in one of the races on Saturday basically by sailing a smarter race in light wind.
After we crossed the finish line for the last race of the last day, we kept flying the spinnaker for about 15 more minutes so that we could practice doing a Mexican spin takedown. We talked through every step before the takedown. We did the takedown. And then we talked about what we could have done better.
That is the sign of a crew that will grow to its potential.
I want to especially thank John Bishop, Kathy Gunst and Herb Loeffler for their efforts training some new crew members on the boat and being the leaders of the crew as we got back on the water. Does not hold me back from yelling at Herb to “Get off the bow!”
Here are two verbal pictures of our experience on land. At the awards ceremony in the tent at the Eastern YC in Marblehead, a buffet was set up and a cash bar.
Each boat got eight drink tickets. There were ten us on the boat. The ticket said “Gosling rum is pleased to provide the skipper and crew of CHARIAD a free Dark & Stormy or another drink with a Gosling product.” There were three lawyers sailing on CHARIAD. We debated for three days the meaning of the plain language on the ticket. Did we have a contract with Gosling to provide eight drinks or eight drinks for the whole crew – 80 drinks. Jessie Witherspoon was the only one of the three lawyers who went to the bar and tried to enforce the plain language of the contract. Jessie was our only advocate. After the bartender started turning circles in confusion about what to do, Jessie relented and take just the one D&S.
Since this story is already being circulated by others, I might as well share it with you. Don Snyder had come over from Woodstock, NY, for the regatta.
This is Don’s Facebook version of how the Awards Ceremony ended.
“bright sunny weather, light but sufficient winds for 2 of the 3 days sailing. there were enough cluster fucks in rounding marks dropping jib and setting spinnaker. we improved as days passed, came in 3rd overall in fleet of 6 in our class (50 boats racing on our starting line). lots of rum on way back into dock, fancy yacht club celebrations afterward… all in all a great time…
one cannot let this moment go without mention of the Captain’s generous reward to his crew by giving to all at the close of the race events that night’s dinner (on him). He led us to where they were disassembling the caterer’s buffet table and were giving the remains away. He encouraged us to eat our fill of chili, hot dogs, chips and cake. all acknowledged this as clear demonstration of El Ricki’s generosity and sharp eye for a deal…
I have to add that in addition to the CHARIAD race crew, Judy Schwenk came to the EYC tent with her all girls crew of wonderful CHARIAD woman sailors who had just come off Judy’s new sailboat.
If you want to have fun, hang out with the CHARIAD crew.
Rick
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