Off Soundings Club 2017 Race Committee Report
By Principal Race Officer – Greg Gilmartin
In an era where tradition is trashed and you’re only as good as your next event, the Off Soundings Club continues to do pretty well. Maybe it’s because we have a long “tradition”, which means we’ve done a lot of “next” events. I took a quick look at “Reflections”, Bruce Lockwood’s personal chronicle of the club since 1933 to tabulate just how many events have actually occurred. The Club has been in existence since 1934. The first race was held in Spring, 1935 when 11 boats sailed from Block Island to Dering Harbor. Since then, there have been 81 Spring Series and 78 Fall series. Two of the Fall Series were cancelled due to Hurricanes and in the Spring of 1945, with WWII ending, 25 boats sailed from Stamford to Manhasset and then back the next day, but there was no Fall Series that year. Thus the uneven number of Spring and Fall Events in our long history and three years of war.
The 2017 season attracted over 100 boats each series. Spring Series registered 110 racers and the Fall Series registered 101. The most the club has seen over the years is 230 in 1970. There has been a general downtrend in participation since the 80’s, and most notably since 2004 when we last saw 150 boats. However, Off Soundings continues to be one of the most popular events in Southern New England and is still appointment racing. 85 years as a club and 81 years of sailboat racing is a remarkable tradition and we continued to add to it this year with the usual mixed bag of conditions and personalities that brought smiles to the faces of many one day and curses into the wind, (or lack of it!) the next. We found out where the border lines of technicalities live and just how far friends will push those borders. And we learned that you can never have too much fuel to get to the starting line.
In the end, the usual suspects walked away with the prizes, give or take a newbie or two. And there are now a few gallons less rum on the earth. More traditions!
Spring opened with a cracking beam reach to 1BI on Friday, then a one sided beat south before a downwind finish at the New Harbor. Nor’easter arrived literally as the first multi hull finished at 1320. We seamlessly replaced the mark boat Pop Edgar to record the finishes. The entire fleet was finished by 1450 pm. Apparently not everyone’s beam reach was “cracking”. Saturday, the RC set a course for counter-clockwise around the island. 100 boats started.
Shifting to the Fall, my intent leading up to the event was to return to Cerberus Shoal on Friday. Mother Nature intervened on those plans and helped us set a bit of history. In the fog and flat water, we announced moving the entire fleet from New London to Gardiner’s Bay in order to start the race there. It was not a hard decision and was made with consultation with some of the brightest minds in the room as well as a belief in the half dozen different weather forecasts at our disposal. Plus a phone call advising us of sunshine at Shelter Island. So for the first time, we moved the fleet on Friday to Gardiner’s Bay. A couple of boats did not make the trip, but we got a short race off in light air in the Bay starting about 1400 and everyone was back at the dock by 1730 and at the party on Shelter Island shortly after.
Saturday’s race faced the same light air – no air issue. After a one hour on shore delay and a couple of delays on the water, we were able to get another short race in under less than ideal conditions. It was a day some may have been wishing for the more traditional windy-rainy weather that has been considered part of the Off Soundings Club story. In summary, the Race Committee did good to overcome various obstacles.
We had two new boats in support of the event, centered around the Fall series where Tom McKenzie allowed us use of Blue Moon as a Signal boat. A serendipitous meeting turned into a new friend for the club. And a long time member, competitor and friend, Norm Peck, also stepped up to lend us his Squire as a mark boat. Tom Weeks in Pop Edgar is now a regular fixture on the course after 3 years and served as Pin Boat. We could not have accomplished what we did without their help.
Henry Dupont IV continues his commitment to Off Soundings in Nor’easter, the iconic image of our Race Committee Signal boat. He has assured me he will be back in the Spring of 2018. Finally, the RC crew continues to evolve with talented individuals making it all happen. Under budget. We approach each event with a desire to create fair and challenging race courses and good management of the 100 plus boats so everyone gets around, gets a score and leaves with an impression that they want to come back for more.
That is a tradition that must be maintained at any cost.
Submitted by Greg Gilmartin, 10/28/17
