CYC Mid Winter Races!

by John Warren
Rear Commodore

As your new Rear Commodore, I would like to say that I hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday season and a very Happy New Year. Have you made your new resolutions for the year? Hopefully they include healthy, fun and energetic activities on the water all year long! With that in mind--DO YOU WANT TO GO RACING?

Our new season of 2004 CYC Mid Winter races are scheduled for January 17th /18th and February 14th/15th. Let's have a huge Corinthian Y.C. presence this year. If you haven't signed up, please do so now--get that boat fluffed up and get your crew ready to go sailing!

This year's Mid Winter races are bound to be fun for everyone on or off the water. We're video taping as much of the race as possible from a chase boat getting the best vantage points around the race course and will be played back at the bar for everyone to have as many bragging rights as your racing buddies can stand.

This year's menu at the buffet will have a Mexican flavor to warm you up after the race and the specially priced drinks at the bar will have a Tequila twist to them--Tequila shooters to Margarita's--you name it. Shed that foul weather suit and put on your sombreros. (February's buffet will present Louisiana Style Cajun food) After you've warmed up at the bar and had some fine Mexican food prepared by our Chef Ian, put on your dancing shoes and get out on that dance floor in our beautiful ballroom with music provided by The Bay Area Blues Society. They can play just about any kind of music and will surely provide for a fun evening.

But wait--there's more! Can you believe this!!!--If you're racing or not, Sunday morning we have Scott Easom, rigger and jib trimmer for Disney's racing yachts visiting our club to talk about the brand new radical Pyewacket, a Reichel-Pugh Z86 with many interesting and exciting photos from their recent sea trials. Also, in February we have Kame Richards from Pineapple Sails who is always filled with local knowledge, new sail technology and very interesting to listen to.

I also want to remind you of past Mid Winters and how much fun they were. Our prestigious club has some very good sailors

1998 Sockeye J/24 Steve Etheridge
1999 Baleineau Olson 25 Charlie Brochard
2000 Tension II Cal 20 John Nooteboom
2001 Nirvana Santana 22 Henrik Hartz
2002 Basic Instinct Elliott 1050 Jan Borjeson
2003 Abigail Morgan Express 27 Ron Kell

Let me be the first to welcome you to a new season of fun!!! We'll be seeing you on the starting line

'E-Ticket Ride -- The New Pyewacket'

Here's an opportunity you don't get every day: Come down to the club on Sunday morning, January 18, to hear local rigger and pro sailor Scott Easom give a slide-illustrated presentation about Roy Disney's exciting new R/P 86-footer. The boat, which was featured in the current 'Latitude 38' (pp.104-106), was launched and sea-trialed in Auckland last month and is a marvel of modern technology -- canting keel, a forward rudder, exotic 125-foot mast, and much more. Scott has hundreds of slides of 'Pyewacket' under sail, as well as close-up shots of how things work on the boat.

The informal show will begin promptly at 10 a.m., and end 45 minutes or an hour later, as the midwinters will be starting at noon. It's absolutely free, and you can get breakfast in the Dining Room beforehand. This is one Sunday 'sermon' you don't want to miss! -- Rob Moore