Two courses, one in grantwriting, the other in grant research, are going to be offered thru MSU's evening college this fall. Grantwriting will be on Thursday evenings. Grant Research will be covered in a single session workshop on a Saturday morning for 2.5 hours. Having members with grant research and/or grantwriting skills would be very valuable to the long term planning committee and the club for future funding.

We have wonderful things to say about the cadre of sailors we competed against, and the racing conditions were superb. To put this in perspective, the usual 1-2 leaders of Michigan District regattas, Colin Park and Jim Allen's finishes are not at the top of this tough fleet. Colin Park was sailing at the bottom of the Blue (championship) and Jim Allen was sailing at the bottom of the Green (President's Cup) fleets! We had several sailmakers, a spar maker and boat builder Nickels and Allen family members racing at this event.

North Cape YC is an excellent host, and a superb place to sail. The racing is right in front of the club, on Lake Erie, with 2 mile legs (mostly windward-leeward 5 leg courses, but the RC did toss in a few 6-leg olympic courses in the windier stuff). With the exception of Sunday's qualifying first race, we had moderate to heavy wind the entire regatta.

Larry wasn't able to sail with us on the last day and we were not able to find a third crew. The usual suspects around clubs (junior sailors, other class' sailors) were away at competing-schedule NAs (420 youths were happening this week). We'll take a DNC and a throwout, probably reducing our placement overall to about 25 out of 33. We got a 15th in one race, and sailed consistently in the mid-twenties in our fleet. We had good starts and were not over early in any race. An over early finish in this regatta was tantamount to taking a DSQ - no boat was able to recover places after getting an OCS, even if they restarted - the competition was that tough.

We got a committee boat end start in one race, and clear air mid-line or near-pin end starts in almost every race; we have improved our big-fleet starting a lot at this event. It serves to remind us that if you want to play this game at this high level, you need to race every Michigan District event you can. And, further, it helps to race the ones in big water to learn to race in 3' chop. It is essential, perhaps even necessary, to purchase a new set of sails for this regatta; we felt our 'good' 2-year old jib was not up to snuff - the vast majority of boats were sailing a new set. We swapped spinnakers on the Olympic courses (swapping a reacher after the 2 reaching legs, so we'd be sailing with the runner on the downwind leg), which helped our performance. We wished for a second halyard to be able to do a peel in changing wind conditions on the first race day!