Hey guys,

First, as I write this, the season’s first race is 114 days away.  It’ll be here before we know it!

So I’ve got just a bunch of miscellaneous items here  First, congratulations to Jane on picking up a more active position in the sailing instructor cadre at the Naval Station.  I can’t think of a better teacher than Jane and I’m sure she is going to rock it!  Some of you know she’s been reducing her sailing with us over the last year and this will continue in 2020.  : (  (I’m sure we’ll be able to kidnap her occasionally hahaha.)  Anyway,  to help us fill in some of her sailing I’ve asked Troy if he can come out a bit more and with a focus on the mast/bow.  Scotty has also expressed an interest in coming out occasionally.  : ) There are no other substantive changes to crew composition and I think we have a great group for 2020.  Thank you — that stability and consistency means a lot.

The 2020 races are now loaded into the crew manager and I would encourage you to register your interested races/dates as soon as you can.  As races fill with a team that comprises all of the roles I’ll lock those races in and make formal assignments.  I expect to continue to target a crew of about seven for most races.

I’ll be ordering more white shirts and cold weather beanies soon (in January for sure).  Please write me with your requests.   If we can get enough persons interested in black shirts, we’ll do those too.  Let me know.

At this point I think the crew meeting will be Thursday, March 26th.  Location TBD but with a little luck back at Chez Caldwell.  ; )  We certainly have enough time to move it around a bit so if you have a conflict, let me know.

The Twenty Hundred Club dinner is April 4th at the Viking.  Details to follow.

Our target work period is April 11 to April 19.  We basically have “the usual” on tap — wash hull, burnish bottom, winch maintenance, saildrive painting, install electronics, batteries and so forth.  I think most folks know this but the boat is at NEB and very close to water and power, which should ease things.  As you can tell the spar is up so there is none of the work associated with that.   We’ll try to pull the cover (weather dependent) on the 11th or 12th and finish all work by the 19th to enable a launch “window” of April 20-24.

Weekend transit back to the naval station would be either the 25th or 26th and we would do a couple of practice and safety sails on April 28th and May 5th.  First race is May 12th.

Speaking of conflicts, I have a big one this year.  The Bermuda race overlaps Around Aquidneck.  : (  I don’t think I’ll be able to get the Twenty Hundred Club to reschedule (and I’m really confident I won’t get the CCA to reschedule Bermuda hahaha) so there’s that problem.   Keep you posted.

I think that’s all for now.  Here comes 2020 (and 10,000 miles sailed on Spirit)!