Spring is finally here!!! and because it is Indiana, we got a 10″ snowfall to usher it in! In true Hoosier spirit, we are opening the sailing season anyway! Many services will be coming back on at the club! Restrooms at the upper shelter will be reopened, trash removal resumed, grounds mowing resumed (once it is warm enough for the grass to start growing) and Club Racing starts back up soon. I want to welcome everybody to the 2018 Sailing Season at Eagle Creek Sailing Club, and I hope to see you all at the club this month!
Mark Walker – Commodore…
It’s time of the year let’s go sailing. The Slip assignments have been completed and are available online. Just CLICK HERE to access the website. Members should feel free to put your boats in your slip anytime you want.
Dennis Robertson – Harbormaster
How to Start Faster
In case you missed the last racing seminar:
It’s make or break time out on the racecourse, how to get a flying start and what to do when things don’t go quite to plan.
When the race officer sounds the starting signal for the Super Sunday races, he can already see which boats are going to compete in the leading pack, which will be fighting with the mid fleet masses, and which crews will consider a recovery to the mid fleet a success. For most racers, the first five minutes set the agenda for the entire race. Yet, unlike sprinters or tennis players, who spend hours and days practicing starting and serving techniques, most of us are content with the 15 minutes or so starting practice we get each weekend in our local club races, compared with the three hours course-racing practice which inevitably follows each start. We all experience elements of a bad start from time to time: no space to leeward so no opportunity to accelerate without being lee-bowed; blanketed by boats to windward; starting at the unfavored end and seeing the fleet crossing boat lengths ahead within minutes of the start; in irons going backwards when the gun goes; or simply being pinned on starboard tack unable to follow any preset strategy. Worse still, sticking out from the crowd in the event of a black flag or individual recall. Consistent good starters avoid these dangers by applying a mix of skills. Many are class specific: the fastest way to learn is by watching your class expert. Sadly, these skills can’t be learned simply from reading. They must be learned just the same way the expert learned them – through time on the water.
Strategic Awareness when Sailing
A clear race strategy leads to a definite starting objective. A starting objective enables realistic priorities to be set; rather than trying to win the start outright we might aim for a more conservative approach, which achieves these priorities. For example, in light conditions the top priority for a keelboat is generally speed off the line, while in a dinghy it’s clear wind. If there is a wind bend favoring the right-hand side of the course, the priority will be a clear lane to tack onto port.
How to handle the boat
Practicing some specific boat handling skills will enable you to accurately position the boat on the start line:
Boat Awareness
Things we need to learn about our own class:
Observational Skills
Practice measuring the line bias – judging how far you are from the line, observing the trends in the fleet, spotting the gaps and the hot spots.
Know your rules
To ensure good starting, we need a clear knowledge of the rules, make sure that our competitors are aware of this, and control close situations before they become incidents. WE HAVE MORE RULES PAMPLETS JUST ASK.
Sailing Routine
All good starters have their own favorite routine. As with any complicated task, a checklist, breaking the task into manageable portions, makes the whole procedure less daunting. Starting the first race of the club or world championship becomes as straightforward as eating your cornflakes. If it helps, write it down.
Here’s an example:
Now all you need is practice!!!!
See you on the water,
Bob Hickok
Racing Chair
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Check out ur ECSC Juniors web page here
Check out our ECSC Junior Facebook Page here
Check out the upcoming 2018 Junior Racing Schedule here
Here is the NOR for the ECSC Indy Laser and Opti Regatta at ECSC on April 28 and 29, 2018
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Ship’s Store
Click here to access the Ship’s Store
Please check out this link monthly for specials.
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Annual Property Walk
The Grounds Committee did its annual “property walk” in early March to make a list of repairs. This has become an annual tradition and it helps keep the club in good working order. We have a number of infrastructure-type items that need to be addressed and we will be taking those to the board for funding. These include:
Spring Work Party
We had our spring work party on Saturday March 31. We had about a dozen workers show up. Many stayed well past noon. John George brought some Bean Soup for lunch and Geoff Endris grilled hamburgers for those who stayed into the late afternoon.
We got a lot of work done: Got the upper shelter spruced up. Replaced some broken picnic tables. Put the RIB lift back in the water (CLICK HERE to check out the Facebook video on that). We even did some drainage work to give drain water a better path to the lake.
Colin Leatherbury continues to make great progress clearing out dead trees and cutting back the bushes and thorns around the outside of the club. When you come out this spring, you will see a much better maintained and much more open club grounds.
For those of you who missed out on the work day due to spring break or Easter holiday, fear not. We still have plenty of work to do. We will most likely have another work day to clear up the leaves that have accumulated in between the boats once the boats are out of the parking lots.
Other Work Projects
We also have a number of projects that people can perform at their leisure. These will be posted on the club web site. You can go to the web site and sign up for the project, report its conclusion and get your work credits. Some projects include:
The new jobs have been posted to the project sign-up board. You can get to the project board from the Harbormaster’s page or by using the THIS LINK.
Landscaping Committee
I am still looking for volunteers who want to work on the Landscaping Committee. We need gardeners who would like to plant flowers and shrubs around the grounds to make the place look a little nicer. Please contract the Grounds Committee if you want to help.
Trailer Parking
We will be mowing the upper trailer lot in April as soon as the swamp drains. We have lots of standing water up there now. The sign at the top of the hill says no trailers until May 1st. This is to give us time to get the field ready. If we get some dry weather and can get the field mowed, we might open up the lot prior to May 1st. Please monitor the Facebook page and your email box.
Note that we have a few trailers that appear to have been abandoned and do not have stickers. If these are not claimed by the end of the month, they will be removed from the club premises. Contact Dennis Robertson if one of the trailers belongs to you.
Geoff Endris – Grounds Committee…