Sail Camp 2004 Recap

Rowland Brown, SailCamp 2004 Director

How good can it get!! 38 Campers, wonderful weather, and great help from parents and friends made this year’s SailCamp the best ever.

The staff of Mr. Tony, Ms Heather, Ms Kate, Ms Jenna, Mr. Robert, Mr. Mike, Dick Pitman and myself all appreciate the excellent response we had from all the campers, and hope that all had a fun and safe time at GRSA this year.

The week started off with superb winds for everyone’s first sail on Monday afternoon. All the campers did well, some for the first time in command of their own vessel. The week progressed with a bit less wind, but enough to move around and get the feel of the boats and what they will, and won’t, do.

Wednesday afternoon we were chased off the lake with the threat of thunder around, but we had fun things to keep us occupied. We had Pirate’s Day, where many were dressed to the hilt as the meanest pirates that were ever seen.

Thursday was a great day for wind, but everyone stuck with it and had the boats moving very well all over the lake. We were blessed with somewhat cooler temperatures for the week, and that made everything just about as perfect as we could hope for.

Friday is always a busy day, but everyone got a good amount of sailing time in practicing racing starts and tactics before we had to get the boats out of the water and have the awards ceremony.

I must give thanks to all the Sunfish and Laser owners who graciously allowed the campers to use their boats for SailCamp 2004. Without your generosity, we would be hard pressed to do what we have. Another person we could not do without is Linda Pierce, who took care of all the registration stuff, and who managed to wrangle enough Sunfishes for the campers. We hope the way that Linda organized things made life a bit easier for all the boat owners, because it made everything so much easier for the staff.

We added something to SailCamp this year. Along with the Sunfish and Albacore sailboats we have used for some years, we included the Laser, a high performance single hander to our lineup. Five campers took to the water in these this year, and had fun keeping them on the move. We hope to expand this next year, dependent on the number of boats available. There will be prerequisites for campers getting into this class.

There are many people responsible for the success of SailCamp 2004, way too many to list here without forgetting someone really important. So, to those persons, and you know who you are, THANKS for the help and support you have given me and the staff. Our thanks, too, to the Chesterfield Fire Department SCUBA Rescue Team who have always been willing to be at SailCamp for that extra margin of safety.

My personal thanks go to all the staff people who kindly spent their time with SailCamp 2004. This was the best year ever.

And my thanks to all the campers for being such a great bunch of kids. I hope that you will practice the skills you have learned, and will advance to higher levels of sailboat sailing in the future. You have begun on a path that relatively few people have the opportunity to take, and that is messing about in boats.

Good luck and good winds.