January - February 2020

Happy New Year to all in the WindCheck Community! What resolutions have you made? If it’s to do more on the water this year, you are in luck. With a modicum of effort, you can plan cruises, regattas, weekday cocktail trips or weekday evening races for all of 2020. If you are doing Sperry Charleston Race Week (congrats to them on their 25th anniversary), or headed further south this winter (lucky you!) or the Block Island Race…

Our friends at the Hudson River Maritime Museum’s Wooden Boat School in Kingston, NY are hosting the annual Riverport Women’s Sailing Conference on Saturday, March 28. This one-day event runs from 9 am to 5 pm. The conference allows participants to choose four options from a dozen hands-on and classroom workshops. Women sailors of all ability levels are invited to learn about safety around large vessels, navigation, maritime communications, outboard engine troubleshooting, marine electrical systems, sail care, race…

Our friends at Rhode Island Billiard, Bar & Bistro in North Providence, RI are hosting a free sailors’ billiards party on Friday, February 28 from 7:00 to 9:00 pm. If you love sailing and reside anywhere between Boston and Block Island, you are cordially invited. “This is a FREE event,” said Anthony “Tony” Costanzo, Jr., a fourth generation proprietor whose family has operated a pool hall in greater Providence since 1909. “Rhode Island Billiard, Bar & Bistro…

With several friends in the WindCheck Community doing very exciting things in the sport, we’ve got a feeling Twenty-Twenty’s going to be a good year! New Hand on the Helm at Alerion Peter Eastman, owner of Eastman Boats and Howard Boats, has purchased Alerion Yachts from Peter Johnstone. Eastman plans to extend the Alerion brand across new models and a broader size range, and further grow sales and production beyond Alerion’s recent business turnaround. “I have loved…

With the start of the 36th America’s Cup presented by Prada just over a year away, New York Yacht Club American Magic is currently testing, tuning and training at their winter base in Pensacola, FL. We caught up with Rob Ouellette, the American challenger’s COO.   WindCheck: Where did you grow up, and how old were you when you started sailing? Rob Ouellette: I grew up in Marblehead, Massachusetts and really started sailing at summer camp when…

Another important factor in any pre-start strategic plan is the current. First you must observe and get an accurate picture of how the current is flowing across the course area. Then you have to figure out how this affects your strategic plan. Collecting current information Just as you must gather wind data before the start, you have to collect information about the set (direction) and drift (speed) of the current. • Before you leave the dock, look…

By Dan Dickison Nothing can undermine credibility faster than an unsubstantiated claim. So, it’s good to know that the people behind the largest multiclass gathering in North America – Sperry Charleston Race Week – always make good on the tagline they’ve adopted for their event: “A regatta unlike any other.” In recent years, Race Week’s organizers have worked hard to cement their springtime event as a bucket-list fixture on the U.S. sailing scene. They’ve done this primarily…

By Tom Darling In 1869, Princeton University’s football team travelled to New Brunswick, New Jersey to play the first intercollegiate football contest. One hundred and fifty years and eleven days later, the Princeton Club Sailing Team led a hardy group of post-season intercollegiate sailors in the debut of their own peculiar sporting event. Sailing 30-foot Shields keelboats in 30-degree temperatures and 25-knot winds on Oyster Bay’s West Harbor on November 16, the kids now called it “extreme…

By Phillip Dickey, EYC Regatta Committee In order to promote ocean racing in the Essex Yacht Club (EYC) and in the eastern Long Island Sound region, a group of sailors from the regatta committee of the EYC created the EYC Ocean Racing Forum in 2019. We decided to build on the strength of EYC in ocean racing—five boats skippered by EYC sailors competed in the 2018 Newport Bermuda Race—to create a forum which would bring together experienced…

By Laura McMillan Director of Communications, Connecticut Fund for the Environment/Save the Sound     The International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) is an initiative that was launched more than 30 years ago by the Ocean Conservancy. Save the Sound (a program of the Connecticut Fund for the Environment) has been the Connecticut coordinator since 2002. Since then, ICC weekend has grown from 18 to 42 cleanup events, and volunteers tirelessly cleaned over 500 beaches! In 2019, Save the…