November 23, 2025
Sunday brought 7 skippers out. The chuckles and jabs started early when Terry arrived WITHOUT HIS BOAT! He went home for it while T, Bruce, Harry, Paul, Wheat, and warmed up playing in the just right speed breeze for our A sails. Oh yeah, T had his coaching and cheering group on hand to add to the fun.
Weather was "Marco Island beautiful", high seventies, blue skies. Unfortunately, the light breeze was coming mostly over our backs and slightly from the left. That meant all our three starting lines resulted in a reaching start. We decided starting in front and heading to our left provided at least some upwind. But that meant a short leg to the first mark, and almost always resulted in a cluster of boats trying to round the mark at the same time. Then a short reach to the offset mark and again boats were approaching the mark and rounding in tight traffic. After surviving the first two marks a long downwind leg separated the boats somewhat but they were lined up approaching the far away down wind mark. Just as the first two marks, the third mark was the site of many collisions. The last challenge was a fairly long upwind leg ending at the left finish line. There were many exciting close finishes with boats approaching on different tacks.
Terry, Harry and T won many races. Paul and Wheat were consistently in the first half of the fleet and eventually Paul celebrated his first ever win. Paul's sailing is improving every week.
See you Sunday. 2:00 at The Cale Model Yacht Club Sailing Center
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Don Armstrong
Sailors are coming back to Marco
Great to hear from Roger. I also arrived in FL yesterday, and a few weeks ago Bruce called me to say he is ready to start sailing any time. So with Rocky and I we should be able get a small fleet going. The sailing marks are stored in the park building. Rocky is going to check with the City this week to confirm when we can get them out. As soon as that's done we plan to schedule a work day to to get the marks out. I'll put out an email as soon as we know the date.
I goodly number of other members have emailed all of us stating when they expect to be back on Marco. It looks as though we will have an active fleet again in late '25 through early 2026.