From the Commodore

Fellow Corinthian Sailors -

Yep, it is muy hot outside. This hasn't stopped a hearty band of sailors from coming out on Sunday afternoon and putting it on the line. Actually for all the heat, we have had a nice breeze all summer. The Wednesday night sailing is quite comfortable and a lot of fun. Bob and his volunteers have been setting up short courses and packing in several quick races. Come down and join the fun.

I appreciate the positive response from the membership on our push to bring the davits and boats into compliance with the bylaws. What a great bunch of members we have. Thanks for everyone's hard work.

Several of our members are just back from cruising the BVI. I hate them less now. I hope they share some stories in the next newsletter. I would like to hear how "Crash" Mittman facilitated a near death experience for Jennifer Merideth.

See you on the docks!  Phil

Upcoming Events – Mark Your Calendars

In May 2000, the US Treasury Department issued a cease and desist order to the organizers of the Tampa to Havana race. Once the Elian Gonzalez hoo-rah subsided, the Baybourgh Yacht Club in St. Petersburg FL once again organized the regatta that was sailed in May 2001. The government grumbled, but did not interfere. Lee Demarest (long time friend and offshore racer/cruiser) again asked me to join the team and this time we got to go. The boat (Allegro) is a Tyana 52. It is a rear cockpit, low freeboard, 42,000 lb cutter design that can maintain 8-9 kts in most wind conditions.

At the start, Lee’s considerable experience racing Lightnings paid off. We took the favored end of the reaching start under full sail right as the gun went off. We lead the fleet out of Tampa Bay, under the Skyway Bridge where we took the rhumb line heading of 180°. About 20 miles off of Sarasota, we sailed in to a great flat hole and Allegro coasted to a stop. We watched the whole fleet close on us until they were nearly abreast. After an hour of this, it filled in with a nice 10 knot breeze and the race started over.

The northeaster continued to build and, with a 150, a staysail and a full main, we were making 8-9 knots. We passed our waypoint near the Dry Tortugas (last island in the Florida Keys) at midnight. We continued the 300-mile trip on a broad reach as the waves began to build and then start to square up as we entered the gulf steam. With the stream flowing northeast and the wind blowing from the opposite direction, the seas went to about 12 feet and were very sharp. As the sun faded the next day, the wind was building to 35 kts and we saw gusts to 42 kts. We got some nice rides off the back of some of the waves and actually recorded 12.7 kts on one fling.

At about 10 PM, we started seeing lights from Cuba. The finish line was the sea buoy at just outside the channel into Hemmingway Marina. It had a dim light and was very hard to see against the lights of Havana. As we rounded the light at midnight, we received a hail from the port captain on channel 16. In English, he said "Sailboat rounding the sea buoy, do not enter the harbor. Lay off 3 miles and come in after 6 AM." I was not happy about that because 6 hours hove-to with a back-winded staysail and a double reefed main in the gulf steam with a 40-knot northeast wind and a 12-ft sea was not fun and I had the 2-4 watch.

As the sun came up over Havana, we hit the mouth of the channel and then appreciated the advice from the port captain. The channel was marked with 6 unlighted day poles and just to the right and left of the poles, waves were breaking over the reef. Miss the channel and you are on the reef. Our closest competitor got in about 7 AM. Her corrected time was 2 hours greater than ours - we won.

My first visit to a communist country was not with out trepidation, but the Cubans were great - cordial, well educated, and appeared happy. A host of officials met us and stamped passports, filled out papers, asked lots of questions, but all were very courteous. We responded with brownies, US cokes, and beer - all gratefully received. The next 3 days in Havana were great and I left with a desire to return some day. I asked a local what he thought of Americans coming to Cuba. He responded, "We have no problem with you. It's our governments that have the problem".

By Bob Gough

Former White Rock sailor, Eric Faust, is campaigning for the Laser Worlds this year. The following are some excerpts from his emails to his father, Bruce, about sailing a Laser in the 2001 North Americans in July on San Francisco Bay. Thought that you might find it interesting.

The St. Francis Yacht Club is pretty swanky. It's one of those places that have three kinds of cheap aftershave lotions in the bathroom just so everybody can smell good while hanging around in the bar. (Note: Always remove your cowboy hat before going in the main entrance at St. Francis. I think they don't like Texans here.) But the club's sauna and steam rooms are more than just luxuries, I'm convinced that no one would sail here if they didn't have these "necessities." IT'S COLD HERE! These people are freaks! They live in a place where one bedroom townhouses sell for $1,000,000, the ground shakes and topples buildings and bridges at random, and the high temperature in the middle of July is 68 degrees. And they think this is all normal!

After a one-hour sail today, I stood in the shower for about 20 minutes until I finally regained feeling in my fingers. The North Americans start tomorrow. It looks like a pretty tough fleet. I think all the weenies stayed home. Lots of current and lots of wind. What's worse, they're setting the course just to the west of Alcatraz. Even the locals say they've never raced in that area before.

The San Joaquin Valley produces 80% of the vegetables in the United States. But, it's really a desert. The only reason they can grow anything but sand is that they've built an incredible array of irrigation canals that stretch from the Sierras for hundreds of miles down the valley. If you've never seen it, it's impossible to describe.

The reason (sun) that the valley is so good for growing veggies, is the same reason that San Francisco Bay is so famous in the sailing world for it's strong summertime winds. For you non-sailors, it goes like this. When the desert in central California heats up in the daytime, it creates a big updraft. The cold air over the Pacific just can't wait to rush into the void that the rising desert air leaves behind. The result is a predictable wind that can build to over 25 knots across the bay in the late afternoon. It's like clockwork - 1:00 PM = WIND. Also, SF Bay is famous for it's current. The entire bay drains in and out with the tide right underneath the Golden Gate Bridge. It's like a funnel as the water gets squeezed through that narrow gap. On a good day, it's like a river as the current can rip at up to 5 knots.

Well, for you sailors, you're probably familiar with the line "It's never like this here." It was one of those days. We sailed the first race in a light 5-knot breeze. I got hammered. I had a decent start and missed the huge 30-degree shift on the first leg. I was able to position myself well at some mark roundings and made a good move on the second weather leg, to move up to 35th at the finish.

It was about 1:30 by the time we started the second race. Still no big breeze. "It's never like this here." The clouds were thick over the Berkley hills. Not a good sign for wind. It was blowing about 8 mph at the start. I had a good start, hit the favored left side and held on for a 10th place finish. Much better.

By the time we started the third race, the breeze had finally built to about 18 mph. The current was about 3 knots pushing you straight backwards as you tried to sail forwards upwind. We were racing trapezoid courses starting directly to the west of Alcatraz. The usual move in the flood tide is to high-tail it for the beach where the current is weaker. But, we were about a mile from the shore. Could you get to the beach for the advantage there? Or, was it too far off the side of the course? I reverted to my primary strategy, follow Russ Silvestri. He's a really good local sailor. Russ was going left, heading for the beach. I footed from the middle of the line and managed to be the farthest left boat by the time we made it to the shore. It all paid off as we were able to overstand the port layline by a zillion miles and still round the mark well in front of anyone who had tried to sail the middle of the course. I rounded the weather mark in about 7th and managed to sail my way back to 13th by the finish. I'll take it. It beats a 35th.

San Francisco is one of the largest port cities in our great country. They've got to bring all those Nikes in somewhere. As luck would have it, our racecourse is smack-dab at the intersection of the only two shipping lanes in or out of the bay. Every ship that comes in to dock is going to pass through the very spot where we are racing. Fortunately, our race committee knows the shipping schedule and can adjust our start time around most of the boat traffic.

The race was delayed a bit by some of those ships moving through the course. This was just enough time for the wind to build to a steady 20 mph, and for the current to reach it's max flood speed. One of the freighters actually stopped and waited for us to start, but another (a barge towed by a tug) just came on through and then performed an bizarre move where the tug tried to move to the back of the barge and ended up pulling it in a circle about 1/4 mile to weather of our starting line. Eventually the whole flotilla wound up drifting with the current straight towards us. We were all lined up to start when my friend Chuck, who graduated from the Merchant Marine Academy (where they teach you how to drive big ships) sailed by me and said, "I'm getting out of here." I took him seriously, but hey, this is a race. I decided to take my chances and sail onward towards impending peril.

As it turned out, we all avoided death. But the committee tried to kill us in other ways. With the flood tide, our 1.25-mile weather leg took about 30 minutes to complete. To make a long race even longer, the committee wound up lengthening the next windward leg. It turns out they decided to keep it over on the shore to avoid yet another ship that was coming through. The net result was a 95-minute race. Our typical races are about 40-50 minutes long. Everyone devoured their supper at the club afterwards and looked generally pooped.

Eric, went on to place 4^th in the Apprentice Fleet (first time NAC sailors) and 16^th overall. With this and other regattas, Eric has qualified for the Laser worlds. Mark Mendleblatt, Dave's brother, won the regatta.

Lisle has updated the CSC website www.cscsailing.org and a lot is new. If you have not visited the site in a week or so, take a look. This is the beginning of an expanded website for the club. It is a work in progress and will continue to evolve.

We are trying to communicate better with our membership, as well as, reach prospective new members. Many of the features are in response to the membership survey earlier this year. This site is for you the member, so we would like your feedback. Do you have any suggestions on how we can improve the content, look, presentation, navigation… of the site. Let us know if you find problems or errors. We hope to keep the content current and relevant, so if you have personal, fleet or club information that you would like to have posted, please send it to the webmaster. The club would like to thank Lisle Eddie for his expertise and help in designing and hosting this site.

The following is a short tour of the website.

Upcoming events and key contacts are posted on the Home Page for easy reference.

The Club contains general information about the club, officers, and membership. There is also a overview of the Fleets. Information about the club and fleets is available for prospective members. The membership application is online for easy access. This location also holds archives of the newsletters, by-laws, past commodores, etc. Space is also reserved for individual fleets to use to promote themselves.

Activities provides information of Racing, Events, and our Sailing Education programs. Racing contains the new sailing instructions and racing rules, race calendar, and race committee related information. Fleets can post regatta notices and scores here, as well. Education highlights our great junior, adult and women’s sailing education programs.

Forums provides an unmonitored bulletin board to post race committee duty rosters; crew needs; availability of crew; and boats, davits, etc. for sale or wanted notices. There is also a general discussion forum for members and others use.

Links provides hyperlinks to some other websites that may be of general interest to club members.

Feedback is sought and always welcome. Send your comments to the webmaster or any club officer.

Please welcome these new members to the club:

The Main Sheet belongs to each member of the club. This is an invitation to all members to submit articles about the club, regattas, meetings, fleets, awards, members, family and community. The deadline for information is the 20^th of the month. Please submit articles to Frank Richards at 7274 Williamson Cir., Dallas, TX 75214, or at frank-r@texas.net. I am also interested in any suggestions on how to improve the newsletter.

Membership in the Corinthian Sailing Club is open to anyone with an interest in sailing. Club facilities are located at 441 E. Lawther Drive on White Rock Lake. Phone 214-320-0841. Email address is info@cscsailing.org. Mailing address is Corinthian Sailing Club, PO Box 180087, Dallas, TX 75218. Website is http://www.cscsailing.org. Both regular and associate memberships are available. Contact the Membership Rear Commodore, Ralph Capen, at rcapen@earthlink.net or 972-669-0010 for details.