www.LHYC.org June 2010
Mission Statement:
The objects of the Lloyd Harbor Yacht Club shall be to encourage and promote interest in, as well as to foster the art and enjoyment of, the sport of sailing by providing the opportunity and means for the development of individual skill and knowledge, encouraging excellence in seamanship and navigation, and by providing participative events wherein these qualities can be exercised under the aegis of the LHYC burgee.
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We are well into the 2010 sailing season at the time of this writing, with a number of major events already behind us – things are moving along too quickly. Thankfully, the hard work of our flag officers, board members and all of the loyal volunteers have made for a very successful opening to our season. Starting with our New Members Party which was a huge success, Mike and Leigh Sterflinger offered their beautiful home and again served as hosts to what has become one of the best club events of the year. More than 70 members and guests attended to welcome our newest members and to rekindle summer friendships. New members were introduced to the club and given their ties and burgees, the canon was fired to celebrate the event and wake up the neighbors. Plenty of food, beverages and gleeful participants were on hand. Thanks again to Mike and Leigh and to our VC Steve LaPorta for his work organizing the event. The Club Commissioning was held on Memorial Day at the club mooring and many boats were on hand to celebrate the formal club opening and share in the ceremony. The canon was fired at 6:15 pm a little ahead of schedule, but all those that were coming made it out to the raft-up before the shot was fired. Plenty of boats were on hand including a large gathering of secondary power boats – someone suggested that we rename the club the Lloyd Harbor Power Squadron!!! Just kidding!
THE
RACE FOR THE CASE – Thanks go to Doug Vaughn who
initially conceived the Race for the Case idea and it was just great! I
received so much positive feedback at the post race party from everyone who
participated it was amazing - maybe it was all of the rum talking, but seriously
the talk was incredible - so great job LHYC! I’d like to thank Jack Posner of
HYC for his help and his clubs hospitality and willingness to host the event
after race party at their club – they have been a valuable supporter of our
events and we thank them.
Special
thanks to PRO Leigh Sterflinger for another great job running races on both
days. Thanks also to Jon Ayers for the use of his handsome RC boat, to Roy
Sherman, Mike Sterflinger, Theo Novak, Bob & June Kendrick on RC, to mark boats
operated by Doug Vaughn, Keith Goldstein, Lorenzo Vascotto and Ron Prior, and
to all of the volunteers and committee members who worked hard to pull this
event off. Big thanks also to Rear Commodore Dave Willis, Glenn Suss and Doug
for the ideas and the many early planning meetings and especially to FC John
Belle who really took the ball and ran with it. Additional thanks also to Jordan
Mindich for supplying us with new marks and making many calls to enlist the J105
fleet. Final thanks go to VC Steve LaPorta who stepped up and helped out big in
the end with the Melrose and getting the coveted cases of rum! (watching the
rum handoff on the water was right out of the Cagney/Bogart movie – The
Roaring Twenties!!) Everyone stepped up so big - it’s really incredible!
Thank you all so much!
We
did not get the numbers we had hoped for, but we did get 30 boats to come out
for the event and that’s almost twice what we have been getting for the Spring
Series. That’s great news for the event and gives us something to build on. It
also means that all of the hard work was well worth the effort. The RACE FOR
THE CASE is alive and we will continue to work hard to promote it in the
following weeks and start planning for next year! Again my unending gratitude
and appreciation to all of you! LHYC rocks! Finally, our Past Commodore Rich
Rubel wrote a companion article to go along with photos taken by Randy Burke of
LI Sail Magazine. See Rich’s very well written article
below or visit www. lisail.com to see the full spread.
THE
HUNTINGTON BAY CHAMPIONSHIPS – LHYC in joint
cooperation with the Huntington Yacht Club ran another fine event this past June
5th. The weather was great with sunshine and good breeze in the
10-15 mph range for most of the day. We ran the Huntington Day Race first (the
oldest sailboat racing event in the area) and then Lloyd’s Trophy Race followed.
A BBQ party followed at HYC and the proceeds of the event were used to
benefit the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation. Awards were as follows: F. Rogers
Ketcham Trophy - Best HYC boat in PHRF- Shakedown, R. Finesmith Trophy -
Best HYC JAM - Strickly Ours, Lloyd's Trophy - Best LHYC boat - Double
Vision, The Huntington Bay Championship as determined by the Race Committee
- Overall Winner - LHYC – Zzzooom. Full race results can be found at
www.lhyc.org
THE 2010 SUMMER SERIES – We had four Summer Series races so far – that’s almost half way through the ten race series. We have had varied conditions with light wind, heavy wind and rain, but that hasn’t kept the fleet of boats from going at it each week. With 39 boats registered in three spin classes, one One-Design class of J24’s and two JAM classes - turnout for our premiere summer event is great. The after race party has moved to the ‘Whales Tale’ Eatery and Bar at the Britannia Boating Center. Those attending have been enjoying the food, drinks, and waterfront ambiance of the venue and our ever faithful FC John Belle has been ‘Johnny on the spot’ on hand to compute and post the preliminary scores.
THE 2010 COMMODORES CUP - We had a wonderfully pleasant evening Friday, June 11, for the annual Commodore's Cup. A steady light breeze moved the 13 boats around the government marks course in just about an hour. Art Kelley and family serving as RC selected the counter clockwise course - starting and finishing the two classes efficiently. Most of the boats gathered at the club mooring after the race for a fun raft-up. PC Charlie Powers in Janann took the cruising class honor. Jordan Mindich behind the wheel (with 8 month old son Grady in pouch) in Shakedown was first in the racing class and fastest overall claiming the Commodore's Cup. Congratulations!
CRUISING – We only have a few more spots available for our reservations for our July 4th Weekend Cruise to American YC and City Island. Complete with fireworks and dinner reservations it is going to be a great trip – please check it out on the club website or contact me ASAP – Aug. 8: Sheffield Is. with Masthead Cove YC - Labor Day Weekend: Milford YC, Milford, CT and then Port Jefferson - check out the website for more information. Everybody – Let’s go Cruising!!!
UPCOMING EVENTS:
Friday June 25th is the first of our newly organized FRIDAY NIGHT CLUB SERIES. This event will be run as a JAM pursuit race for club members/boats only. The pursuit start concept will allow us to simply determine the winners by finishing order and get us all to the club mooring together for a raft-up, some merriment and a great start to the weekend. Awards will be given out to the top three finishers after each race at the club mooring and a series prize will be awarded to the boat with the best overall record at the Awards Dinner in November. You’ve got to be in it – to win it!!! I look forward to seeing many of you there!
Board
Meeting Bullets: The April
Board Meeting addressed the following as part of
our agenda:
See you on the water!
Warmest regards,
Joseph Scarpulla
Commodore LHYC
Lloyd Harbor’s Race for the Case- An Old Race with a New Twist
By Rich Rubel
Like a bunch of Privateers swooping in for their allotment of grog, Lloyd Harbor Yacht Club’s Race for the Case entrants were thirsty and seeking their bottle of Mount Gay Rum after a great day of racing. Conceived as a western Long Island Sound regatta to attract Oyster Bay, CT and other western Long Island Sound one-design, PHRF and IRC boats to the Huntington NY area, Lloyd Harbor’s Spring Regatta was expanded to a new, two-day format over the May 22-23 weekend. With the added incentive of a bottle of rum for each boat and a case for the overall winner, it seems to have worked. "Provide rum and the sailors come like flies on, well, you know what,” quipped Race Organizer Doug Vaughn.
Typically,
the LHYC Spring Target Rock racers would be comprised of one JAM and one
spinnaker division totaling approximately a dozen boats. This year, the club
sought to convene many different one-design classes that race around the sound,
but have not been to the Huntington area for some time. Vaughn thought, “I was
looking to get the Lloyd Harbor YC name back in the mix and let people see that
we can run a good race/event out this way; moving it to a more central location
on the Sound allowed other clubs to have easy access to the race course." The
organizers planned to attract J-24’s to J-44’s, with many classes in between.
What we did get were J-80, Tartan 10 and J-105 divisions and a wide array for a
mixed spinnaker division. A couple of no-shows squashed some of the action, but
the one-designs shared a starting line making for some close action at the start
and up the mile and half windward-leeward course. With an array of conditions,
i.e., 12-15 kns. out of the SE, providing some bumpiness from a strong flooding
current, dropping to about half that later Saturday afternoon, it was anyone’s
race.
The highly competitive JAM boats were treated to three navigation style races over the two days, for nine miles around Green/Red Can “E” NE of Eaton’s Neck Point, then out to Cable & Anchor Reef further out in the Sound, to Nun “6” off Lloyd’s Neck and then back to the finish by Gong 15. LHYC’s perennial favorite, Rascal, sailed by Chris Schneider dominated his division with three bullets, followed by Huntington Yacht Club’s Water Music, double-handed by Stephen O’Reilly and daughter Tara. In JAM II, Jack Posner’s Jumping Jack Flash from Huntington YC gave Schneider some competition for the case, also garnering three bullets followed up by the Sabre 34, Summer Salts sailed by Peter Wolpensinger.
The PHRF division was unexpectedly broad and ran the gamut from a J-44 rating 33
to a J-24 rating 174. But these two Lloyd Harbor boats from both ends of the
rating spectrum battled it out in a seven boat division, which also featured
visiting competitors from Port Jeff., Ragamuffin – a Pearson 10M and a USMMA run
J-35, Hypnos. Phil Walters and Glenn Suss (also a Race Organizer) on Double
Vision had their challenges sailing on the line next to the J-44 and boats
easily rated 60 points faster, but was seemingly unperturbed by the situation
and won their division with all bullets and a third in the light air, last race
on Saturday. Second in the division, with ten points, three behind Double
Vision, went to the J-44 Resolute, sailed by the families of brothers Don and
Rick Rave. In one-design, Damian Emory’s Eclipse, from Mt. Sinai, is probably
salivating and getting his limes ready (although not necessarily a foregone
conclusion at the time of this writing) beating his competition, J-105
Shakedown, sailed by Jordan Mindich, in every race. The J -80’s were similarly
dominated by LHYC’s John Storck, Jr. who won all but one race, followed by Soul
Rebel sailed by Rich Rubel, perhaps keeping the case from John by preventing the
clean sweep. It was also good to see a reemerging Tartan 10 fleet in
Huntington coming out to race; the mighty Dreadlocks team swept day one but did
not compete on Sunday, allowing Tizona, sailed by Cesar Vallejos from LHYC, with
no other competition, to win their division by one point.
Sunday’s dense fog which promised to lift by late morning, but didn’t, proved to be interesting for the fleet. For starters, finding the committee boat, which was in a new location safely tucked deeper in Huntington Bay than Saturday, having the fleet avoid heavier current and any southern LIS traffic was harder than expected. With a range and bearing to the windward mark, visibility of the starting pin and the leeward mark clearly in sight of the RC and racers, two races were safely held completing the regatta. Kudos were extended to Certified Race Officer Leigh Sterflinger by racers and LHYC Fleet Capt. John Belle, who cited Leigh and her minions for the crisp committee work and effective radio communications directing the fleet through their paces. Belle noted, “Excellent race management, combined with a great Saturday night party sponsored and held at the Huntington YC, are the hallmarks of a Lloyd Harbor event. I don’t think, on both accounts, we disappointed anyone.”
Lloyd Harbor Yacht Club’s history and spring races spans over 40 years. It is anticipated that the buzz over the Race for the Case will similarly run for some time and hopefully ensure its long and healthy run.
Past Telltales