COMMODORE

Looking backwards, Pauline and I joined the Club somewhere in the vicinity of 1974 – 1975. To assist my dementia-induced brain in this recollection, I was forced to call upon those lifetime influential events such as the purchase of homes, births of children, birth and deaths of the loyal family pet, and most importantly here the timeline ownership of all prior watercraft. The simple purpose of this recollection is merely to point out that it has taken 26 – 27 years to make it here to page one of the Telltales – talk about your late bloomer.

I am somewhat intimidated by this page one location. For years, as your social chairperson, as I pleaded with you to bring more potato salad and coleslaw – No thank you - we have enough tomatoes – my perilous words of wisdom were relegated to pages three or four. Most recently as I hawked hats and T-shirts, I either did not have a column or on the one occasion that I did, my ominous words found themselves on pages four, five, six, or seven – you got the picture.

So, now that I am front page news – Listen up!

For those who were not able to attend the FINAL BASH, Saturday November 3^rd, our social hostess Kelly Mallaby and Celebrations Banquet facility did a wonderful job. Kelly hand etched a sailboat emblem onto candle center-pieces that were then given away to those lucky enough to have been seated in specially designated chairs. Although I personally am not a fish eater, I heard many high praises for the filet of sole stuffed with crab meat entrée.

The new Officers and Committee Heads for 2002 are listed later in this Telltales along with our members of the Board. Not listed however, but still important are our Committee Head Assistants: Richard Sprowl for Harbormaster, Mark Mallaby for Racing, and George Alyea for Membership.

Your Board of Directors and Committee Heads have been working hard setting plans for the upcoming 2002 season. We have an outstanding Sailing Club with great programming for racing, cruising, education, and social events. In 2001, we had 21 new members join the Club including two family legacy members.

As we look towards 2002, your Board of Directors has endorsed a motion to replace "A" dock. This endeavor carries with it not only a heavy financial commitment, but also requires the need for many volunteer hands. I am sure your Harbormaster will post work-party notices asking for your assistance. Our Club runs on your volunteer help. So make it a New Year’s resolution to get involved. Assist with this dock project, flip a burger, pull a weed, help out with the Little Eagles sailing program, or participate in a regatta. Your enjoyment with your membership will increase and your Club will benefit.

On the subject of "A" dock replacement - if your boat slip is located on "A" dock, remove any personal items such as mats, bumpers, dock lines etc. that you may have left attached to the dock. This includes any boats that any of you failed to remove last fall.

One more thing, don’t forget that all fees are due by March 1^st. Failure to do so will cause you to relinquish your current slip assignment and will re-position your name if you are on the slip waiting list.

So for right now, put that extra log on the fire, pull up that wool blanket, and sit down with a good book.

Happy Holidays and New Years greetings to all – may they be Happy and Healthy.

We will see you back on the water in just a few short months.

Larry January, Commodore

HARBORMASTER

We had our fall work party and we had some new faces. Bob & Yvonne Schwartz - thanks for doing such a great job on the kitchen and social shed. Yvonne brought cookies for the party! Wayne Myers spearheaded the shed clean out!

Jennifer Fisher - Jen & I moved some smaller boats & 'smaller leg' picnic tables - those things are HEAVY! She also helped clean out the social shed. We picked up lunch for the workers that stayed well into the afternoon.

Thanks to the everyone! Ralph Merriman, Rick Sprowl, Colin Riseley, George Alyea, Bob Hickok, and Mike Kaschak tore off the Pump House roof (literally) and constructed a new one before they applied the new shingles. Mike is mean with a shovel, and watch out for George when he has a power saw. Rick is wicked with hammer!

Charlie Brehob, Bruce Cameron, Roger Black, Ty Hickok all helped with a variety of other chores, moving boats, wood, dock frames & floats, and shed clean outs. Also, thanks to the IUPUI sailors who had earlier cleared the beach of the club boats...so that was not a task that had to be done at this work party.

The beach will now have 2-3 more inches of sand on it for next year...that will keep Bob Bodish from having to mow the beach. If I missed anyone, please call me, as the work party sign-in sheet only had 6 names on it.....Some of us went sailing after the work party for a couple of hours, what a beautiful day!

The water system will be shut off soon, this is a necessity, as the pipes freeze if the water is not drained from them. So sorry if you missed the use of the sprayer, but we must do it before winter really sets in.

The estimate for A-Dock is in and will be brought before the Board for final approval. But, I would like to ask all of those on A-Dock that are not planning to pull their boats out for the winter, to move them to either B, C, or D docks. That way we can work on the destruction of A-Dock at our leisure over the winter. Did I say leisure?

Rick and I have found many boats without sticker numbers on them, some with stickers several years old, and other boats just rotting away on the property. We are trying to clean up and will be addressing this problem in the next TellTales. If you think you have a boat with no sticker, call Rick Sprowl or me...we need to identify the owners ASAP!

Christy Merriman, Harbormaster

RACING

Sailor of the Year: Bruce Berner

Sailor of the year goes to an individual who both performs on the race course and volunteers time to help the Club. This year’s recipient, Bruce Berner, has been very helpful to the Sail Club over the years including this year running the Hornback Regatta. It takes a lot of time and effort to run a successful regatta and Bruce has done a fantastic job. Bruce’s success is a team effort on Ambush and is largely in part to the great crew work he receives from Ethel Morgan and Angie Dewees.

On the race course, he dominated this year. No one in his fleet (Red Fleet) won more races than him. They won 15 races this year with the next closest competitors being Jack Hale and Don Argay with seven victories each. With Ambush traveling around the country to so many regattas, they were limited to the amount of time they were allowed to race at Eagle Creek.

Calculating the winning percentage compared to starts for their Red Fleet, Ambush won the races they started 58% of the time. Don Argay was second with 35% and Rick Ahrbecker was third with 24%.

Bruce Berner’s success was not only limited to sailing at Eagle Creek, this year they also traveled to the J-22 Midwinter’s, Cleveland Race Week, the Red Fox Regatta, and the Equalizer Regatta.

Congratulations Bruce, Ethel, and Angie!!!!!!!!

Also, this year Mike Gray was the winner of the Series Champion trophy. This trophy goes to any Sailor who wins all the fleet series for the year (Spring Sunday & Wednesday and Fall Sunday & Wednesday). As I recall, there aren’t too many winners of this elusive award. Congratulations Mike!

Terry Killen, Racing

MEMBERSHIP

Well, first things first. I should probably introduce myself. I’m Mike Kaschak and I will be the new Membership Chair. Your best bet to get a hold of me is to E-Mail me at mkaschak@hotmail.com. You could give me a call, but I doubt you could get through (teenage girl). Assisting me this year with membership is George Alyea.

We should all give Keli Mates a big Thank You the next time we see her out at the Club. She did an excellent job with membership this past year.

Winter storage fees will remain the same this year at $2.50 per foot and will be assessed December 1^st on any boats, trailers, etc. that are on the Club property (this includes at the docks).

The dues statements will be mailed out the first week of January and will be considered late if postmarked after February 28, 2002. Please send back early to avoid the rush!

As usual, Membership gets a little slow this time of year and we have no new members to report.

Mike Kaschak, Membership

SOCIAL

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the hosts and hostesses that so generously gave of their time to make the 2001 social season at ECSC so successful. I hope you are all up for it again in 2002. However, I do believe we may have a couple of events that will require someone new to step up to the plate next year. So, I would ask all of you to think about being a host for the next season. It’s a really great way to get to know your fellow club members and to give back to our Club.

Thank you to Roger & Michelle Knapp and all of their helpers for a great Chili Cookoff. The patriotic theme was very much appreciated by all who attended. And, the chili was delicious as always. First place in the cookoff went to Steve Smith. Dan Grace, Angie White, and Kelly Mallaby were also awarded prizes for their efforts. Congratulations to all the winners.

Also, a great big THANK YOU to Kelly Mallaby and Celebrations for the fabulous Final Bash. Everyone seemed to have a really fun time. The food was delicious and of course the band, Harvey and the Bluetones, was super. I hope all of you who attended enjoyed the evening.

Mark your calendars for the bus trip to the Strictly Sail boat show at Navy Pier in Chicago. We will be going on Sunday, February 3^rd, 2002. I will give you more details in the next Telltales. We charter a bus so registration will be a must as we have a limited number of seats.

Finally, I would like to thank Larry January for making my first year as your Social chairperson so easy. As the past social chairperson, Larry had everything organized and ready for me to take over with little effort on my part. He was always there to answer any questions and to offer a helping hand. Thanks, Larry. And, thanks to all of you who supported the social events this year by either hosting or attending. All of you are what makes our sailing club such a great place.

Please feel free to contact me at 244-1561 or email me at esprowl@home.com with any ideas or to volunteer for an event in the coming year. Happy Holidays and I’ll see you all next year.

Edna Sprowl, Social

The Indy Highlander Cup turned out better than we hoped for. This was an idea that Tom Kling and Tim Hollingsworth had to create a bond between the two sailing clubs in Indianapolis (ECSC and ISC) and to have some fun while encouraging Highlander sailors to get out and use their boats.

The "party club" (us), really endorsed the series and got all our Highlanders out at least once; 11 skippers in all and lots of ECSC sailors as crew. Particularly, ECSC had four skippers, seasoned racers, to jump on and steer a borrowed Highlander for the first time. And, most did quite well, especially considering some of the conditions we encountered...like, the high winds for this year’s Governor's Cup. Five boats capsized before the start of the first race!

ECSC wasn't the overall winner, although we held the lead going into the final regatta at Geist. However, we won the party award...if it existed.

And, we proved that ECSC is still the best! What other club has members willing to loan out their boats, let them travel to another lake...all for fun.

While it was our club award, "The Top Dog," ECSC skipper Jim Grant was the best skipper. Congratulations to Jim and crew and to ISC on winning the first Indy Cup Highlander Challenge series.

Charlie Brehob

TAILER’S TIPS & TALES

Welcome to yet another completely useless and absolutely fact free, pre-winter episode of redundant information (That means you have heard all of this crap before). It's not my fault! I was asleep in a sunny location (that will only be revealed to those who are on the need to know basis). Evan poked me with a stick and asked me where this article was and I stood right up and said "Where's my drink!?" After a short scuffle over the last bottle of Red Stripe, I realized that I had better sit down a pen a few lines for this issue, pronto!

Evan, how's that Red Stripe? (Note to self: Never wrestle a guy bigger than you for the last drink when you have just woken up from a dream about yourself and some Colts cheerleaders).

So … Greetings Eagle Creek sailors of Eagle Ocean! Prepare to be jonesin’ for sailing. That is right! Winter is on its way and you better have plans for your boat. Here is a great bit of advice for everyone: Do not leave your boat in the water all winter! For some great laughs, see the photos in the glass cabinet on the racing shack by "B" dock. Count on it, you and your boat will look just as stupid. The water will freeze, you can be sure of it. The thing that happens first is the ramp gets too slippery to get the trailer in the water and then, you guessed it, it's all over! An entire season of ridicule from all of your friends just isn't worth one more cold sail before the season ends.

There is more than one school of thought on how to leave your boat on the grounds. You can cover it up with a tarp and protect it from the weather or you can leave it uncovered and let the winter weather keep it clean. You were going to wash it in the spring anyway, weren't you? If you leave it uncovered, it is a great idea to clean all of the leaves out of it after they fall. Leaves contain tannic acid and leaf marks (of the all-winter long kind) take some scrubbin'. It seems to me that the dirtiest boats come out from under the tarps in the spring. No matter, it all washes off with a little elbow grease and a few drinks.

Also, park your boat on a level surface, if it's a cabin boat, it is designed to handle most all weather in a level state. If you put the bow up you may run the risk of having rainwater flow down from the cabin top to under the front of the hatch. I've heard of poorly placed tarps helping boats fill their cabins with meltwater too. When in doubt, find someone with a boat like yours and ask what they do in the winter.

OK, get your tips right here:

Tip 1) Do not forget to thank Greg Johnson for doing a wonderful job this last year as our commodore. It is the toughest and most thankless job on this planet. I wouldn't do it!

Tip 2) Welcome Larry January as our new Commodore for the coming year and don't forget to remind him what a hands free and rewarding position he has been provided with. After all, he won't be paying dues this year. What more could you ask for?

Tip 3) Think about bonfires and ice skating, your Club does not stop having chair parties just because the water is frozen. You meet the nicest people at a chair party. Come out with your skates and snow shovels to help keep the skating rink free of snow. A few sticks for the fire would be nice too.

Tip 4) When the snow gets really thick on the roads, the hill at the Club can be treacherous. If you don't have the rig to handle the hill in the snow, park at the top and walk down.

Ooooh the pizza is here, stay tuned for more…

Tailer, The De-staffinator

FINAL BASH AWARDS

Bruce Berner Sailor of the year
Kenny Chapman Sportsman
Bob & Janet Hickok Party Trophy
Mike Gray Series Champion

CHILI COOKOFF

The 2001 Hornback Chili Cookoff was a wonderful evening, enjoyed by all. The theme was changed, due to recent events, with national colors being flown and the pledge of allegiance starting off the evening.

People reflected the FREEDOM to sail, and enjoy good friends and fellowship shared in this country, as the Star Spangle Banner played. The serving line was started by veterans of U.S. armed forces and services.

There were many great Chili's, side dishes, and outstanding desserts.

The winners of the 2001 Hornback Chili cook off, were:

3rd place: Angie White and Kelly Mallaby (a tie)

2nd. place: Dan Grace

1st place: The prize was a hard to find American Flag, won by Steve Smith, (a Purple Heart Veteran). Steve was really honored by the award.

A special thanks to all the Club members and their guests; for making the evening such a memorable shared point in life.