Commodore's View

Well folks, it’s that time of year again: put the new calendar up on the wall, revise the list of spring projects to prepare the boat, make a list of resolutions that won’t be kept (I PROMISE to wash the car.....), find yourself commodore for the coming year. You know, the usual stuff.

That was for the folks that have stopped reading this already and skipped to Racin’ Dave’s article. This is the annual ‘pump up the membership for the coming year’ article and I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to try and raise your interest level in a single thing to do with this club. What I am going to do is let you know what events we’ve planned for the year. Whether or not they’re successful depends totally on you.

There will be seven races. Three of them will be offshore, the rest in the river. Two will not be PHRF Points races, but the rest will be, certainly the three offshore races and they count "bonus" points in the PHRF records. One will be a women’s race with openings for 50/50 boats.

There will be cruises, at least once a month. Some of the cruises will be "dry sails" with no over the water access. Most will be accessible by both boat and car. Some will be only accessible with a boat. The deal is, you can’t please everyone all the time, so we’re going for the broadest base we can reach.

There will be a program at each of the General Membership meetings. Racin’ Dave says that he’s going to lean toward the ‘instructional’ side this year. I thought I had done that last year. Oh well, it just goes to show you can’t please everyone.... Either way, Dave is a veritable fountain of useful knowledge, and he’s ALWAYS more than willing to share, so I know we’re in for an interesting year program-wise.

Actually, we’re in for a good year no matter how you look at it, racing, cruising, learning, whatever your reason for joining North Florida Cruising Club. The point here is, we the board can announce, sponsor, support and present all the races, cruises and programs we can think of and none of them are worth a damn unless the membership gets involved. We have an excellent Board this year, and I expect a lot from each and every one of them. That shouldn’t be a problem, since all are dedicated volunteers they’re interested in doing the best they can.

I expect a lot from you, Joe Member, as well. If you’re with us for the racing, make all the starts. If you’re with us for the cruising, make all the anchorages. If you’re here to learn, glad to have you next to me. We’ll learn together.