May 2022

As we emerge from March of 2020, and stride forth in the spring of 2022, and as we have mentioned before in this column, some things seem to be permanently different. And I have talked about how we are going to treat the newbies and how we shouldn’t act like the grumpy ranger but more like the hail-fellow well-met mentor. But then, once that effort has been made, mostly last summer, what will this summer look like?…

Our friends at the National Women’s Sailing Association (NWSA) are holding their 21st Annual Women’s Sailing Conference at the Houston Yacht Club in La Porte, Texas on Friday, May 20, 2022 from 6 pm to 7:30 pm and Saturday, May 21 from 8 am – 5 pm. The event welcomes all women sailors of all levels and ages.      The program begins on Friday evening with a munch & mingle where attendees will have the opportunity…

Essex Yacht Club’s Sam Wetherill Overnight Race starts May 20 By Terry Ann Klee, Essex Yacht Club Communications Chair     Sub-chasers, ocean racing, and ukeleles! Yes, there is a connection. It took only one month for this year’s Sam Wetherill Overnight Race to get twenty-five registrations. Hosted by Essex Yacht Club in Essex, CT and set for May 20, many skippers see this race as a serious tune-up for races such as the Newport Bermuda Race….

Maybe you’ve wanted to try racing but were unsure of how to find crew. Or maybe your regular crew isn’t available to race. Or maybe you just want to try racing doublehanded. Well, our friends at the Eastern Connecticut Sailing Association (ECSA) are now offering a Doublehanded Non-Spinnaker rating option for their Offshore Circuit in addition to the usual Spinnaker and Non-Spinnaker ratings. Any boat registered in ECSA may compete in DH Non-Spin races. DH Non-Spin ratings…

Our friends at the Storm Trysail Club are pleased to be hosting (at last!) the 75th running of the Block Island Race. The 186nm spring classic starts Friday, May 27 off Stamford, Connecticut. “In 2020, the race was canceled due to the pandemic and in 2021, ‘N over A’ was hoisted to abandon racing the morning of the start due to a combination of extreme weather conditions that would have made racing unsafe for competitors,” said John…

By Peter Becker Photos by Bill Shea Photography Last spring, I sailed an amazing race called the Bermuda 1-2. The first leg to Bermuda is sailed single-handed followed by a double-handed return to Newport. The solo offshore part was particularly rewarding and a great awakening to the joys of solo sailing. Short-handed sailing is so much fun that with the help of the New York Yacht Club, the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club, and the Cruising Club of…

Sailboat racing would be a lot easier if there weren’t so many boats getting in your way all the time. Even when you have fast boatspeed and a sound strategic game plan, you won’t get to the windward mark very quickly if you let other boats push you around the racecourse. That’s why you need good upwind tactics. Tactics are the boat-on-boat moves you make when you are fighting for position with other boats. The purpose of…

By David Ornstein Photos by Mary Alice Fisher High school sailing programs across the country have expanded as a whole, now numbering in the many hundreds across the seven districts that comprise the U.S. high school sailing circuit. But few programs have grown with the speed and success as those of the schools that sail out of Greenwich Harbor in Greenwich, CT, an area that now consistently churns out top finishers, college recruits and world champion sailors….

SoundWaters knows that if they build it, they will come By Rick Bannerot How do you get – and keep! – kids interested in sailing? You need at least three elements to plot a direction, (and a fourth and/or fifth point on a chart so that you have a true path.) There cannot be a pattern with only two elements; in game theory and storytelling, it is called “The Rule of Three.” The answer to the question…

By Katie Friedman, NY ecological restoration program manager, and Melissa Pappas, ecological communications specialist Coastal communities, home to almost a third of Americans1, are facing sea level rise and erosion. While we may think of these consequences as distant and future threats, they are already taking hold of local communities.   Artistic rendering provided by GEI and DMEA.   The residents of Douglas Manor, a community in Queens, New York, have not ignored these threats; rather, they…