Racing April 2021

The beginning of racing season is approaching rapidly, and we hope that you are preparing for it.  The ECSC Work Party was on Saturday March 27 and by the time you will be reading this article much of the racing infrastructure will be in place.  The racing buoys, Race Committee pontoon, Aircraft Carrier and Safety Boat will be deployed and ready for use.  The first Wednesday night race will occur on April 21^st at 6:50 PM.  Also, by the time you will be reading this, the last meeting of the Winter Member Race Committee will have occurred. At the meeting, a Blue /White Fleet assignment policy discussion will have occurred and fleet assignments for all racing fleets will be in place.  The final Spring and Summer Series Wednesday Night and Sunday Honor racing Notice of Race and Sailing Instructions will be posted very soon so watch for them.  The Mayor’s Cup will be the first regatta of the season on Saturday and Sunday, May 22-23, so also watch for those NOR and SI documents and mark your calendars.

This season the racing program will be putting on a total of 60 races to include 9 regattas, two of which will be boat specific, two will be open and five will be ECSC specific.  Several of the regattas will be linked with significant social club activities.  The number of racing activities is weighted to the later part of the season hopefully in association with a decline in COVID incidences.  I hope we can make this a breakout sailing and racing year with the difficulties of 2020 behind us.

The committee intends to focus on growing the number of racers and the number of times each boat races this year.  We are going to try to do this by engaging non-racers and new members with current racers as mentors.  We hope to increase the satisfaction current racers experience with racing by organizing a dedicated and experienced race committee presence on Wednesdays and migrate this formula into Sunday to gradually build participation there.

More volunteers from our Membership could help get these projects off the ground and create a more enjoyable environment for all.  I hope that you can volunteer early in our efforts to enable a rapid start to improve racing this year.  We will need to continue the volunteer race committee ( SignUp Genius) particularly at the start of the year until we can recruit more dedicated RC staff.  We also count on volunteers to sign up for regatta PRO’s and race committees, food and beverage overseers for Wednesday Night racing and mentors for new racers.  Please contact Nancy, Rich Fox, Geoff Endris or myself to volunteer for an activity that fits your fancy. Or ask how you can help or participate in the racing program.

See you out racing !!

John Kohn and Nancy Goff