A Big ASC September

Ahoy and happy fall to all!

Even though we’re getting to the end of our 2022 season, we still have lots of stuff going on. For this post, we have some regatta results, info about the September board meeting, an invitation for the Northern Lights Regatta (our last for the season … sniff!), and a plug to attend the fall work party.

Regatta Results & Highlights

We had a great Fireweed Ladies Race! Despite a pretty dismal forecast, we still had six boats on the line. Teams included the following:

• Adriana Ramirez and Oliver Wright sailing Lucky, the newly restored Skipjack 15
• Brie Busey and Emily Ramirez sailing Buccaneer 18 #5260
• Camille Oliver and Tom Harrison sailing Waldo, the ASC club Buccaneer 18
• Cathy Wright with both Jake Black and Adrian Cryan, sailing Buccaneer 18 #5262
• Courtney Ruckel and Joyce Cryan sailing Buccaneer 18 #5281
• Nancy and Gabe Black sailing Sea Scout, Nancy’s new Bucc!

Winds were decent for the whole weekend. And although it did rain quite a bit over the weekend, we found some nice rain-free windows for racing on both days. Congrats go to Brie and Emily for taking first place, Courtney and Joyce for second, and Cathy and Jake for third. And an additional congrats to Adriana for sailing in her first regatta with an all-teen team!

We had a big turnout for the 55th annual Gov Cup, with a total of seventeen participating teams. (We had ten teens racing in the Open Fleet, and seven teams racing in the Bucc Fleet). I was surprised by the solid turnout, especially given yet another dismal forecast. And racers were rewarded by two days of weather that out-performed the forecast, with decent wind and occasional bits of sunshine on both days.

Our winters in the Open Fleet were Tom Harrison and Camille Oliver racing Tom’s Lido 14. They were followed by Bart Hawkins racing in Big Lake’s only Megabyte. In third place, we had Cedar Ruckel and Clayton Oberlitner racing an ASC Club Lido. It’s worth pointing out that Cedar and Clayton were an all-teen team, so they get an extra round of congrats for some really solid racing.

Steve Ryan and Brie Busy dominated the Bucc Fleet with six bullets over the series. They’re headed off to the BNAC (the Buccaneer 18 North American Championships) in a week, and I can’t think of two better sailors to represent the ASC. Tom Gage and Gabe Black took second in the Bucc Fleet, and Geoff and Cathy Wright finished three points behind Tom and Gabe for third place.

Beyond the racing, it was a wonderful weekend. We had (as always) a fanatic potluck, sunset sailing on the Ensign with a family of loons and a crazy-intense rainbows, and lots of time to hand with friends around the campfire.

And we found another great club Lido naming opportunity when Adriana and Sophia lost their mast do to what we think was a loose pin at the base of the shroud. So check out this pic of the newly christened Mast Casualty.

September Board Meeting

We’ll have our September board meeting this coming Monday at 6:00 PM. As usual, all interested ASC members are invited. Key topics for the meeting include:

1. Work party planning
2. Annual meeting planning

I’ll send out a meeting link to members on the mailing list and on the Discord server.

Northern Lights Regatta

Weather permitting, we’ll have the Northern Lights Regatta on September 24th. This is a low-key, one-day regatta, and it’s our final race of the season. By tradition this is a highly informal race with a Le Mans-style start from the docks, and a racecourse using Big Lake islands as marks. Since we’re already loosing light, we’ll aim for an afternoon race followed by a potluck and evening campfire. Racing Vice Commodore Brie Busey will send out more details as we got closer to race time.

Fall Work Party

We’ll have the Fall Work Party on September 25th starting at 10:00 AM. This is our “put away the club” event, and we need as many members as possible to get through the work quickly. We’ll get out further details after next week’s board meeting, but in the meantime we wanted to make sure everybody marks their calendar for the work party.

Thanks, everybody. We’re excited for one more great month of sailing before we have to put our wonderful little club to bed for the winter.