Ahoy.
When you read about local sailing champions, what comes to most
people's minds is which yacht club the sailors hail from. Now you
will have to include the Sea Scouts, who earned a reputation as
national champions. Members of Newport Sea Base's Sea Scout Ship 711
have just earned two national sailing championships at Chicago's
Columbia Yacht Club from Aug. 4 to 9.
An unselfish volunteer adult leader, Mike Steward, who himself has
taken very little credit for his Sea Scout Ship 711 accomplishments,
has for years taught numerous boys seamanship, self respect and the
Sea Scout's duty to our country. I know he must be on cloud nine as
two of his Sea Scout sailors, Tom Hartmann and Trevor Gurley, have
won both the 2002 William I. Koch International Sea Scout Cup and the
Boat/U.S. Sea Scout Cup while competing on Lake Michigan.
Both scouts earned the national championship titles competing with
Sea Scouts from across the U.S. and three other nations. An
interesting note is that this is the first Boat U.S. competition
sailed since the beginning of World War II, to help commemorate the
90th anniversary of the Sea Scouts. Newport's ship 711 took first and Dana Point's ship 939 sailors Nathan Prather and Brandon Ferrigno
took third place. It's exciting news, so keep an eye on the scouts,
both boy and girls, as they become known as competitors in sailing
circle.
As I write this column, I am watching the Pacific sea conditions
for a yacht delivery by Mitch Keeler, who is a San Diego captain who
I work very closely in this business. Keeler is leaving the dock
today to bring a McKinna down from Sausalito to Newport Harbor. At
the same time, I am planning a delivery of a Navigator that I will
skipper from Newport to Alameda next month.
Mother Nature has a sense of humor. The buoys are reporting that
the swells at Point Conception are 3.6 feet at 13 seconds with steady
atmospheric pressure. This is the perfect -- and almost unheard of --
conditions that skippers pray for going uphill to round the point,
however, this is a downhill delivery with seas on the quarter. I know
that when I leave the dock to head up north that Point Conception
will be as nasty as usual, making my crewmember and I question why we
are punishing ourselves again. At least the yacht I will take up
north has stabilizers to take out some of the roll but that
sacrifices at least a knot of speed.
Tip of the week is to check your boat's anodes and inspect your
boat's metal parts for signs of electrolysis. Do you know where and
