Sunday-Apr 6, 2025

This was the first scheduled race after the Icebreaker and skippers seemed ready to start the season.  

The evening before, the weather predicted a short, light rain shower stopping at 6 am on race morning.  I notified everybody that we were racing.  Fun sailing was at 10:00am and the race started at 12 noon.  I went to bed.  

The next morning, the prediction was that there would be an additional 30% chance of a short, light shower around 11 am,stopping before noon.  Not ideal, but I had told everybody we were racing, it was low risk, and we could still race at noon……. Silly Me!

The light rain that wasn’t supposed to be, started as I left my house just after 9:00a.  When I got to the pond just before 10am, people were already there, sitting in their cars trying to keep dry.  The rain was light, so we got out and chatted and looked at the darkening sky. 

A couple of still-hopeful skippers had boats they wanted to tune before racing started so they put them in the water between raindrops.  It would have worked except there was also no wind.

The highlights of the day were a couple of spectator cars that drove up to watch us standing in the rain, looking at boats that were floating becalmed on the pond.

As the clock approached the hour when the rain was supposed to stop, the clouds got darker, and the rain got heavier.

At that point we unsuccessfully tried to huddle under the one umbrella that Greg LaPlante brought and decided that even hardy men of the sea, such as us, could not fight mother nature and we should adjourn to the club house (Dunkin’ Donuts) to get dry and warm.  I waited until noon in case someone else showed up and then joined the other skippers at Dunkin’s. 

Cliff Martin, Commodore