August 1996 - Volume 26 Number 8
Last updated: September 22, 1996 @ 19:09 CDT
Saturday, August 17 at Seis Lagos
COMMODORE COMMENTS - Larry Featherston
VICE COMMODORE'S REPORT - Steve Hanes
26 FLEET REPORT - Dave Taylor
TWENTY-FIVE TELLTALES - John Vaughan
23/24 FLEET - Ray Pryor
CRUISING REPORT - Sam and Donna Blake
RACING REPORT - Al Barboza
PROGRAM NEWS - Jim Wallace
SOCIAL NEWS - Lora Featherston
ICE CREAM SOCIAL/POT LUCK DINNER
WEIRD SCIENCE
CONGRATULATIONS
1996 OFFICERS and BOARD OF DIRECTORS
1996 CALENDAR OF EVENTS
DOOR PRIZE!
THE SALE MAKER (Classified Ads)
COMMODORE COMMENTS
Water, water nowhere in sight; if it don't rain pretty soon I'm going to have to learn how to take flight. Hot it is on most of these days, I keep looking for shelter as I just sit here and swelter. Water, water nowhere in sight; some to drink but to waste not tonight. I wish it would rain, before a fourth night; the rivers are low and the lakes are not plenty, more like puddles after a dog show of many. I sit in my boat and look to the skies, not a cloud nowhere in the heavens to my soon fatal despise. I cook eggs on the top of my motor in 2-cycle grease and I flip them over to prevent sun burn, the buzzards are circling , is it me they want or am I just being dazed by the hot sun that hangs high over. We used to hate rain in those days of the spring, but a simple mist of joy we wish it to bring. Rain on me now has a different meaning, to stand in the middle and beg is so demeaning. We ask for rain at night when we can, if I could find that large water hose I'd turn it on and just stand. If we could reroute the Trinity I don't think we should, there's just not that much blue in the waters that we poo-poo.
There is fun to be had if you wish to join, lots of things to do at the flip of a coin. The Ice Cream Social is in August, hope you're going to be there and not stand in the closet. More cruising is coming and racing too, catch a wave if you can find a puddle, it may be the only way we can make do. The summers are always hot this time of year, being cool can only be played by ear.
See you in the mist, or is it just steam on my glasses.
VICE COMMODORE'S REPORT
We're growing! That's right, we gained two new members since last month. Bobby and Sissy Allen just bought their M26, Dream Boat, that they plan to trailer to local lakes from their home in Irving. They are new to sailing and are excited about the opportunity to meet our members and learn more about the sport, according to Bobby who called me after being referred by Wilma at The Rigg Shop. Thanks Wilma for sending Bobby and Sissy our way.
Wilma
also gets credit for our other new members, Mike and Sue Kelton of Plano, who just bought a new M26X which they haven't named yet. Mike, Sue, Bobby, and Sissy, please make sure to come out to our Ice Cream Social on Saturday, August 17, to meet many of our members and begin learning ways to maximize your enjoyment of your new boats! You have joined the greatest yacht club around which now has 72 families with which to share sailing experiences.One way to learn of the many experiences of our club, is to visit our Internet Web Site at http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/vmyc. It has been updated with our latest racing results, cruising experiences, and newsletters, as well as several new links to exciting sailing sites elsewhere on the Web. This includes two new sites just published by members Roland Shambry and Randy Gilbert. You can reach these new links from the Member List area of our homepage. Other new links on our site include Boat/U.S. where you can join or win free prizes, BoatNet which has a great index of boating sites, clubs, and Internet mail lists, Texas Sailing News which is an on-line version of the publication Telltales/Sailing Texas Style, and one of the greatest sites of all that our members will find of interest is the new MacVenture On-Line Yacht Club Archives site which contains indexed archives of many of the past email posting of hints, tips, ideas and such posted by over 400 Venture and MacGregor owners who share in this information exchange. Those of you who attended the Internet presentation at the last club meeting will recall us talking about this email exchange and many of the great ideas that we can learn from are now archived on-line!
For those of you who have not yet had the opportunity to sail on Possum Kingdom Lake, I highly recommend it. It is likely one of the most challenging lakes in the area to sail. The narrow channels with shifting wind gusts from the canyon walls can make for quite an adventure, but the views are breathtaking. (The gusts can take your breath away as well!) Linda and I had the opportunity to sail P-K last weekend when we accepted Woody and Patsy Mill's invitation to spend the weekend with them in their new lakeside home. Their beautiful home which they just completed building has a gorgeous view from their living room and back patio of the sun setting each day across the lake. As you might expect, Woody has built their home with a steel structure, designed to withstand a Galveston hurricane! The interior is so quiet you can't hear the passing ski boats on the lake. He has his own boat ramp and has completed the steel structure which will lead to the floating dock which will be constructed next. When completed, he will be able to dock his boat and walk right up to his back door! Now that's what I call living!
Back to sailing -- On Sunday morning, the four of us sailed Carpe Diem from their backyard through the cut to Hell's Gate and back in 4 - 1/2 hours. We had great wind all morning and sailed the entire distance at hull-speed, negotiating the narrow channels and shallow areas without ever once motoring. The most exciting time was passing Hell's Gate, taking pictures of the homes overhanging the ledges 200' above, when the wind currents coming through the "gate" caught us, first trying to blow us to the far shore, and next the backdraft trying to draw us to the edge of the cliffs! Make sure to put Possom Kingdom on your list of lakes to explore.
On a closing note, here are a couple of quotes found on The Mother of All Humor Archives on the Net:
A successful man is one who makes
more money than his wife can spend.
A successful woman is one who
can find such a man. - Lana Turner
If you want your spouse to listen
and pay strict attention to every word you say,
talk in your sleep. - Author Unknown
Smooth Sailing!
26 FLEET
Must be summertime in North Texas. How can you tell? It's H O T, and the lakes we fondly remember are now mud holes. Marinas are looking like dry storage yards. We're racing at night to keep cool. Yup, it's summer all right.
But sailors in the 26 Fleet are making the best of it. Terry and Sandy Smith "discovered" Lake Texoma during the July 4th Cruise and have been back several times, in addition to a few trips to Lake Lavon. Sounds like the 26X Recess is getting some nautical miles as well as trailer miles this summer.
Steve and Linda Hanes
went out to Possum Kingdom Lake last weekend to visit and sail with Woody and Patsy Mills. They successfully challenged Hell's Gate, a narrow canyon famous for shifty winds, on Woody's boat, Carpe Diem. Steve said the lake is beautiful, with sheer cliffs on one side, and the wind and weather were good.George, Judy and Tracy Gabert
took it a step farther, actually a thousand miles farther. They took Wind Dancer to Wisconsin. Launched at Sturgeon Bay and sailed up the Green Bay shoreline to Chamber's and Washington islands and back. Visited with their son George and family. Said it was a very nice trip. Weather was in the high 70's with some rain, good wind and 2 - 3 foot waves.Back at home, the Texoma keel shark has a cousin at Joe Pool. With the lake level down about 8 feet, Al Grikis snagged the bottom while backing out of his slip and bent some parts. Hope he can get it all back to normal before the next cruise.
Welcome to our newest M-26 member Bob Allen of Irving.
Hope to see all of you at the Labor Day Cruise.
TWENTY-FIVE TELLTALES
Yo-Ho-Ho- and a bottle of rum. Just to get you in the right frame of mind. You know, sometimes you get not so subliminal unsolicited messages from people that make you stop and think.
This happened to us the other day while pulling home from Texoma. A young man pulled up beside us in his pick-em-up truck, honked his horn and pointed backwards toward our boat. Thinking the worst, I pulled off the road and walked around Island Time for a looksee.
Well, I bumped the tires, felt the hubs for heat, shook the mast carrier, tugged on all the trailer tie downs, examined the winch and bow tie down..(By the way if you don't use a bow tie down on your boat in addition to your trailer winch, you ought to...Doesn't have to be a lot, but beats having your boat bouncing around tripping the winch lever and all of a sudden it's the Wright brothers all over again...get my drift?)
At any rate....nothing...couldn't find A N Y T H I N G amiss...A N Y W H E R E. But all the rest of the way home we wondered what piece of the boat or the whole boat was about to come loose. At home I looked at it one mo time....Same Thing...Nothing.
Since then, we've given this unsolicited gesture by a passing motorist its due amount of consideration, but have come to no real conclusions. Maybe he was telling us "What a nice boat", and to that we say thank you. Maybe I just misinterpreted which finger he was pointing. We've received a few sailor's salutes from time to time. None of them really our fault..HA. Our mast carrier rig moves around a bit when we trailer. Perhaps he thought it was too loose..or Maybe he was just honking his horn in time with the music and drying his fingernail polish at the same time. Well, whatever it was, we appreciate it. We'd much rather have somebody point something out to us that isn't wrong than not point something out that is.
This happened to Sam and I while trailering to New Orleans for the nationals quite a few moons ago. We stopped at a stoplight in Beaumont, only to have a motorist tell us we'd been dangling the mast carrier from the mast rather than being attached to the boat. Not only embarrassing, but could be pretty expensive depending on what it might hit.
By the way, all of you air conditioning addicts who didn't make the July 4th cruise, really missed a lot of fun. Was it hot? You bet, but all 20 boats who were up there managed to beat the heat and have a heckova time. Kay and I had five great days on and mostly in the water. Nice breezes at night, campfires, two fantastic fireworks displays and just enough cruise events to make it interesting. It was great to see all the gang. Woody and Patsy were there, who couldn't make it to the first cruise this year, and Jimmy and Gini Gray and his New Orleans crew joined us for the day. We really showed our expertise (and other things) on the windsurfer.
And then there was "Foster," Marshall and Carol's Olympic sailing dog who single-handed his umbrella sail equipped floaty in a never to be forgotten finish to the Sail What Ya Brung. No, we're not going to tell you more..You just shoulda been there.
We have one fleet member who would rather look at pretty nurses at Presbyterian Hospital than go on a cruise. He liked it so much he's gone back in for his third go-around. Seriously, we're all wishing Alan Cook a speedy recovery and can't wait to see him back out on the water again.
Happy Sailing.
23/24 FLEET
July Meeting:
The Hardin, Featherston, Jensen and Pryor families made it to the July meeting, so the 23/24 fleet made a pretty fair showing. Steve Hanes put on an excellent program explaining and showing the Internet. For a lot of people it was their first time to see our V/MYC web site. There was a lot of interest, and with all of the questions I'm not sure that we even got to the end of Steve's snazzy presentation that mixed computerized slides with live screens from the Internet. Thanks Steve!
Dick and Beth Hardin
should be back from taking their teenage grandson sailing on Lake Texoma. Some kids sure do get lucky.We also learned from the Hutchinson's that Anegada Island is no longer off limits to cruisers due to new ATONs (buoys). Anegada is in the British Virgin Islands 11.6 nautical miles north of Virgin Gorda and surrounded by the deadly Horse Shoe Reef. It about 9 miles long, has beautiful beaches, a high point of only 28 feet, over 300 known wrecks, great snorkeling and at least one hotel, and several restaurants with names like Flash of Beauty, Big Bamboo, and Neptune's Treasure, and biggest attraction of all "not much else".
Dallas Summer Boat Show:
Charlotte and I worked the boat show for the club. We managed to be there while someone signed up for the fall sailing class. I suppose the final tally on the class will show up somewhere in this issue. We found out from The Rigg Shop that ex-member Brinkley Snowden sold his Venture 24 (Bingo was it's name) and bought a 26. Maybe we'll get a new 24 fleet member as a result. (That the Bingo ... er ... Domino theory of recycled boats.) Bingo has been a landmark at Scott's Marina on Grapevine for years as a teaching vessel for North Lake Community College and a U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary patrol boat (with sails no less).
Mark Yeager reported in "Southwest Sailing News" that Van Zandt and Grayson counties law enforcement officers are keeping an eye on sailboat trailers and raking in some dough on violations. Violations of federal D.O.T. regulations like 86 inches maximum beam without a permit, 4 foot maximum rear overhang, and 13 feet 6 inch maximum height. Grayson county is on highway 75 near Texoma and Van Zandt county is on I-20 between Dallas and Shreveport. So maybe Al Barboza isn't alone in attracting some unwanted attention.
Regards.
CRUISING REPORT
Howdy again! It is cruise time again, and the last Big Cruise of the year is about to happen - the "Labor Day Cruise!" The Labor Day Cruise will take place at Lake Texoma at North Island on the west side. The cruise dates are Saturday, August 31 through Monday, September 2, 1996. We are asking that each of you bring at least 2 logs (more if you can) for the campfires. We also are asking that each of you bring a watermelon (decorated preferably) to enter the watermelon decorating contest, to eat later, and to use for the seed spitting contest.
The activities planned are:
Friday:
Saturday:
Sunday:
Times of activities will be given at the cruise.Remember!
The contest for the Grand Prize of the BOARD SAILBOAT will be determined at this cruise. The sailboat will be given away at the campfire on Sunday. The latest standings were posted in the July Venturing, and almost everybody still has a chance to win. You need to enter all contests to increase your chances to win!Donna and I
hope you will make this cruise, and don't miss out on the fun. We will see ya'll at the lake.RACING REPORT
The last Night Race will be August 24th. It has been a very good season, and I think everyone that raced had a good time. The weather has been cool for summer nights, and the winds were generous at times.
The first of the Fall Season Races begins September 21st, with the 21's and 22's as Committee Boat. Let's all come out and have a good time!
If you have any questions about racing, please call me at 270-1048 after 6:00 p.m.
"Man invented the slowest form of transportation - the sailboat - then he decided to race them."
- Philosopher Unknown
PROGRAMS
Rick Curry from Mariner Sailmakers will speak to the club at the September 17 Membership Meeting to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the new sail materials.
Find out why sometimes your sails just don't seem to trim right.
SOCIAL NEWS
Thanks to Linda Hanes, Janelle Schmidt, and Jennie Taylor for bringing refreshments to the July meeting.
We look forward to seeing everybody August 17 at Seis Lagos for the Potluck Supper / Ice Cream Social. Plates, napkins, and silverware will be provided. Please bring a dish to share and/or ice cream and your favorite beverage. Don't forget your bathing suits. I'm hoping to finally be allowed to go swimming! It's been a long, hot summer. See you there starting at 4:00 p.m.
SUMMER BOAT SHOW
We look forward to seeing everybody
August 17 at Seis Lagos
for the Pot Luck Supper / Ice Cream Social.
Plates, napkins, and silverware will be provided.
Please bring a dish to share and/or ice cream
and your favorite beverage.
Don't forget your bathing suits. See you there starting at 4:00 p.m.
DIRECTIONS TO SEIS LAGOS
Take 75 North to Parker Road exit. Take Parker Road East (right) for 8 miles to FM Road 1378. Take FM 1378 North (left) for 1 mile to Seis Lagos. (On the right, just past the "Equestrian Center"). Check in at the guardhouse. The clubhouse is down the road on the right.
WEIRD SCIENCE
(Especially printed for all of our V/MYV teachers!)Congratulations!
DOOR PRIZE!!!
$70.00
How would you like to have an extra
$10.00 or MORE???!!!
At each membership meeting,
all members' names will be placed in a hat,
and one will be selected to win the prize.
But, YOU MUST BE PRESENT TO WIN!!!
If the member drawn is not present, $10.00 will be added to
the pot and left to accumulate meeting after meeting
until we have a winner!!!
Jeff Tucker of Garland
was the lucky (?) name drawn at the July meeting,
and was NOT present to collect his $60.00 prize!
Classified Ads are FREE to members. To place an ad, call the Venturing Editor. (214) 271-5073
FOR SALE:
MacGregor 25'FOR SALE:
1996 JohnsonFOR SALE:
1976 Venture 222
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© Copyright 1996 Steven J. Hanes, All Rights Reserved