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I will be taking over as Race Committee this year. First though, I want to thank Rick Graef for all the wonderful work he did as Race Committee the past 2 years. Thanks to him, the racing program is in good order and the transition went very smooth. I will be continuing a lot of what Rick started. We will have the regular Wednesday evening races, the Sunday races and the 5 major regattas. In addition, we will continue with Rich Fox’s Indy 200 regatta for White/Blue fleet boats, and the Ladies’ sail.

We will continue with the 4 fleets this year.

• Red Fleet: higher performance keelboats with low PHRF ratings and gung ho skippers.
• Green Fleet: dingy/planing sailboats & catamarans
• White Fleet: keelboats with higher PHRF ratings
• Blue Fleet: higher PHRF boats and novice racers.

We have seen a huge increase in the number of “cruisers” who have come out to try their hand at racing in the Blue/White fleet. Based on the numbers, it looks like they are having a good time.

This year, I want to make a change to the Sunday racing series. I would like this to be a little more “family friendly” and encourage more cruisers to come out. So parents, bring your kids out for a Sunday sail and a little friendly competition. Races will start at 2:00 and end around 4:30 followed by hot dogs or burgers afterwards – just like on Wednesday nights.

We will also have our major regattas: The Mayor’s Cup in May, the Flying Scot Regatta in June, the ECSC Regatta in July, the Governor’s Cup in September and the Hornback Regatta in October. These are all great events that are well attended. I would like to remind the “non-racers” that everyone is invited to the regatta parties at the Mayor’s Cup, Governor’s Cup and ECSC regattas. We will have music and food for a low fee.

As a reminder to all skippers: ECSC is sponsoring a Club Race Officers training class on March 11, 2017. This is a great opportunity to deepen your knowledge about how to run a race. Mark the date on your calendar and make plans to attend. More to come next week.

All racing events have already been posted on the web site calendar. I will be updating the Race Committee signup web site soon.

As in the past, we will have 3 pre-season racing meetings for those interested in racing this year. During these meetings, we will register skippers for racing, get people signed up for Race committee and go over the rules of racing. The topics are as follows.

[one]Geoff Endris[/one]