TELL TALES (Aug. 12, 2009)

·        HAPPY BIRTHDAY: John Light, a new member of the Green Fleet, turned 11 yesterday. That’s a “Jubilee” day when you turn the age of your birth date, like John becoming 11 on the 11th. Also Mariah Miller will become 13 on Aug. 18, which falls next Tuesday. As an aside, Bryan White leaves our fleet for college this month, meaning we have no November birthdays in our fleet.

·        SCHEDULE:  

Aug. 10-14 – Special Green Fleet training period (1000 to 1600)

Aug. 15 – Fall Series race 1

Aug. 22 – Fall Series race 2

Aug. 29 – Fall Series race 3 and boat load

Sep. 5-6 – Labor Day Regatta at the Sarasota Sailing Squadron, Sarasota

Sep. 12 – Fall Series race 4

·        WELCOME ABOARD: We want to welcome all 15 of our new Green Fleeters. They are, in alphabetical order, Matt Blow, Evan Dietrich, Nicholas Etz, Sara Frajerman, Justin Frow, Nicolas Hernandez, Jacob Hinshaw, Alexis Jenkins, John Light, Louisa Nordstrom, Courtney Purcell, Brianna Trecartin, Bogan Whitehead, Garver Whitehead and Truitt Whitehead.

·        ADDED COMMENTS: There are 10 boys and five girls. Nicholas Etz spells his name with an “h”, but Nicolas Hernandez does not. The latter is out of the country on vacation and will not be joining us until Aug. 22. Louisa was in Europe most of the summer again. Evan Dietrich is Chloe’s younger brother and Brianna is Scott’s younger sister. Brianna, who turned nine last April, is our youngest sailor. Two Green Fleeters, Alexis and Truitt, were born in 1995. Almost half of the fleet, seven to be specific, were born in 1998. With nine in our RWB fleet and 10 in our Portsmouth Division, VYBA is starting the new school year with 34 sailors.

·         GOOD SUMMER: Although we had only 76 youngsters in our learn-to-sail program this year (down from last year, but up from 2007), we still filled our Green Fleet with another big class. Additionally, we did not miss any entire sessions due to bad weather. Granted, we went out late or came in early a few times, but we did not miss any entire classes that we can recall.

·        GOOD ATTENDANCE: Garrett Lawlor was our attendance king this past year. Out of 51 sessions, he missed only five. Samantha Wood was not here seven times and Scott Trecartin was absent on only nine occasions. And most of those times by those three were excused absences.

·        SCORING POLICY: In the past, an excused absence counted as number of boats present plus two and an unexcused absence was number of boats plus three. We are changing it this year to penalize people who do not take the time to let us know they are going to be absent. From now on, unexcused absences will be number of boats plus four. Word to the wise: communicate.

·        LOST & FOUND: We took a load of items to Goodwill on Aug. 6 and plan to go again Sep. 3.

·        WEBMASTER COMMENT: Andrew Sosa, a Laser Radial skipper and our webmaster, has made several much needed changes to the VYBA website recently. He put our new year-round schedule up along with a special Green Fleet welcome and links to the Sarasota’s Labor Day Regatta. He suggests that anyone who may have bookmarked or favorited the VYBA homepage, should revisit it and re-bookmark or re-favorite it because the old link won’t work. He is on vacation this week and this issue of “Tell Tales” will not be posted for another week.