Hi everyone,

I just wanted to say hello to all my fellow Heckscher sailors since I might not see you all again till next spring. This past Saturday I went for my last sail of the year at Heckscher and wow, what a great day, I wish there had been some more people out there. As it was, besides myself, our new Hobie 16 sailor Mike was the only one to brave the 18 mph southerly winds and October chill. Pretty impressive since this was his first season on a cat! The best part about the day was that there were no power boats and a steady 15-20 mph breeze making the waves great for riding off the wind.

Although I had a pretty good season this year, despite the late start due to the cold, it was sad to see Heckscher empty so many great Saturdays and Sundays. I don't know what we can do, but if we all want to get the most out of our short season we really need to get more participation. It’s hard to bring in new boats because this can be an expensive sport, but we do have a lot of solo sailor (myself included) who have room for one more and you can’t have more boats until you have more people interested in sailing. Since there is certainly not enough interest in LICSA racing to support even occasional racing, I think we should just try to get people down to the beach for casual sailing events. People have enough excuses not to go sailing, we need to give them a few excuses to go sailing. Anyway, I hope to see you all a lot more next year.

By the way, as some of you know, I’ve been building a 14’ cat for sailing on the Sound on weekends when I can’t make it to the Island and I made a web site all about it so take a look at www.rclandsailing.com/catamaran to see what I’ve been up to. When it’s done next year I will definitely bring it to Heckscher at least once to show it off.

Kris