Hope you have RSVP’d for the September 8 Annual Meeting & BBQ. Will and Doris have again offered up their beautiful home in the Santa Barbara foothills to host this event. Their home has a wonderful view and patio to accommodate a large crowd. The food and camaraderie is great and the afternoon highlight is the mystery gift auction MC’d by the very entertaining Past Commander Neil Ablitt. (No meeting on Thursday September 6th.)
As usual, August has been a great month for boating activities. In this newsletter, you will find reports from members who cruised to Santa Catalina and San Miguel last month. Also as usual, in these reports you can expect a little bit of adventure which may happen every time you toss off the docklines.
Political race predictions have come under careful scrutiny since the 2016 election and weather predictions have yet to gain the status that meteorologists would be eager to claim. The initial reports for the August 30 Thursday Evening Rally were to expect mid-channel wind at 20+ knots out of the west and 4 ft swell. Rich and I discussed what would be the best approach for this kind of weather forecast, especially as the event called for the inclusion of crew who may not have had much experience with those conditions. We thought we could hug the coast and stay out of the worst of the blow. When we gathered at the Marina 1 gate, it became clear that the predictions were significantly off as we looked at the breakwater flags barely floating to 5 knots or less from the southeast. Another Thursday Evening Rally stymied by strange anomaly weather –well I guess it can’t be called an anomaly if it keeps happening. Nevertheless, three boats left the harbor with 11 people aboard and spent the evening searching for wind that never materialized. See further details by the participants in this newsletter. Maybe September?
I now have 20 followers of my Meetup Group which is called “America’s Boating Club Presents Stories from Local Boaters.” In addition to promoting our Fun & Entertainment meetings on Edhat and Noozhawk, I use Meetup to promote these evening presentations. I encourage all our squadron members to join Meetup and select our group for getting updates on upcoming events. In addition to the updates you’ll receive, you will be helping to promote the squadron by virtue of the number of followers. As people are looking for fun activities to participate in Santa Barbara, they will be inclined to attend our Fun & Entertaining meetings when they see that we have 50 or more members following us. There is no cost to joining Meetup and you only get updates for the group(s) you select and when a new group is created. Please go here to join: https://www.meetup.com/cities/us/ca/santa_barbara/
Fun and Entertainment meetings return on October 4 when Mike Pyzel makes a return appearance with an Anchoring Seminar that not only will take the fear out of the activity for you but will also instill a sense that no one gets it right all the time and each time is just another learning experience. Of course if you never give it a shot, you won’t ever learn much. So mark your calendars now and show up early as his presentations are as knowledgeable as they are entertaining.