Quannapowitt Yacht Club

Water is both the medium our sport is played in and a substance so dangerous that the National Safety Council reports that over 7000 people drown annually.

Swimmers are not immune; one quarter of all who die are swimmers.

We need volunteers to help prep the club and greet prospective members, contact Rich and Pauline Mastronardi. And come practice with us so our guests see a busy club.

An on-the-water practice day is a great way to start the racing season, which begins on Wednesday evening. You will have a chance to practice starts and mark roundings. This practice is for beginners and experienced sailors. We’ll do a little bit of tacking practice and then run 3-minute start sequences, sail the course for 2 minutes and then do it again and again.

QYC Laser sailors made a great showing at our May Madness Laser Regatta. New member Sara Helbling, placed second in a very competitive fleet of 20 sailors from all over New England – ME, VT, NH, RI, CT and MA. Your Commodore and Eric McCaffrey placed fifth and sixth respectively, and Members Bill Dobson and Scott Doran persevered through the rain and tricky wind shifts when more experienced sailors headed for the beach.

When you plan a regatta you haven’t the faintest idea what kind of weather you’ll have, so it was with a pretty profound degree of disappointment that the weather for our May Madness Laser regatta began to make its self known out of the long-term forecasts – rain and thunder with moderate to light winds.

On Saturday an ambitious group of members got it all done! The docks are in, including a repaired one, the grounds are raked, decks power washed, clubhouse cleaned, dingy racks moved, racing marks set and more.

On Saturday the 17th we'll hold our first racing seminar of the season. This is a good time to come get reacquainted with the rules. The information is aimed at all racers with an emphasis on beginners. If you have questions contact Brain Wilson, head of our Race Committee.

Welcome to spring!

The warm weather is making early sailing look like a real possibility this year. I hope you had time this past weekend to at least look under the winter cover.

Our Annual Spring Meeting is this Friday at 7:00. I look forward to seeing you there. My original speaker had to drop out, but I have asked a great alternative to talk on wind shifts and will hear today. Plan “B” is an instructional video with lots of racing action. Either one will be short and a good way to prime your brain for the upcoming season.

Winners Roger Sharp and his daughter Laura Sharp dominated the entire day.

We had another great "Chaos Cup" regatta last fall on October 17th at the Quannapowitt Yacht Club in Wakefield Massachusetts with seven boats attending. As always the QYC members pulled together to help out on the race committee boats and back at the club house in the kitchen.

Just like last year it was cold. It even snowed the day before the regatta! It was also pretty windy in the morning with white caps and gusts blowing across the lake. I became very nervous when Diane Kampf said that she was not going to sail in the rough conditions because she will generally sail in anything. In the end her husband Greg Kampf convinced her to sail so all was good. Lets face it a Flying Scot is pretty hard to capsize on a moderately windy day even for an inexperienced sailor.

I like the fact that I need to stay in shape if I want to be a good small-boat sailor.

It’s hard to motivate myself to exercise when I don’t have a goal. Sailing gives me that goal. I know I do better when I’m at a reasonable weight, have a bit of aerobic capacity and don’t wear myself out holding the tiller on a windy day.

Older bodies take longer to get in shape so when February appears I know I’d better put in a little effort – less comfort food, walks when it’s warm enough, some bicycle style crunches every other day, lifting some modest weights to build a little endurance in my arms. It’s eight weeks until docks in and I want to be ready – well, at least sort of ready anyway.

So, welcome to the middle of winter; but don’t blink, spring is gaining on us. I’ll see you in April for race practice. Be ready or be sore.

Jay Livingston, Commodore

On a gray fall day with the breeze appearing only as patches of ripples that meandered down the lake scooting individual boats around like leaves on a parking lot, we race.

This is fall in New England; not too many more times to get the club’s fleets out and stay warm and dry, so we use what we have. I call over to John, on the race committee boat, that I’m glad I have my job (to keep my Laser moving) and not his (to divine the steadiest direction of the wind and consequently to set a fair course.) John dryly observes that, “You just do the best you can,” and John does.

The first race he starts the three fleets three minutes apart, but ends up with the first two fleets just a mixed clump of boats sitting on the starting line causing what wind there is to lift right up over the shapeless sails. The mess just barely sorts itself out in time for the Lasers to start with enough open water to get across the line.

Before you put the boat away for the winter in 2009 there is one last regatta, North of the Carolina's, that you must attend!  October 17th, 2009 the Quannapowitt Yacht Club, 26 Linda Road in Wakefield, Massachusetts is hosting our annual Flying Scot Regatta affectionately known as "The Chaos Cup".  QYC has hosted "The Chaos Cup" regatta for twenty-two years.