Thank you. Sincerely…thank you for the opportunity to serve you as Commodore. It has been an amazing journey for me and I appreciate you letting me lead us for the past 2 years.
In that time, we’ve accomplished a lot! Seventy five days of racing at two venues. Two amazing Birthday Regattas, two Regional Class Regattas (Lasers and Sunfish) and one National Championship Regatta (Buccaneer 18). We became a “Greener” club, with your efforts to comply with Sailor for the Sea Clean Regatta Best Practices – achieving Silver Certification for the Buccaneer 18 National Championship and our 2020 Birthday Regatta (thanks Deb Heisler)! We started monthly Happy Hours, created a Junior Racing Fleet complete with its own Championship Trophy, supported the Blind Buccaneer’s with their quest in learning to sail, and had many other fun and meaningful events.
Arizona Sailors participated in world-class events in other locations as well. There were Laser Sailors at no less than four events in California. We teamed up for competing in Long Beach Race Week and joined in legendary Fireball Class events around the world. And that’s just the ones I know about.
One of the things I lost the most sleep over was our decision to move our monthly meeting location. And while it took a couple of tries, we’ve had overall positive feedback about our current location at Dave and Busters. Our new venue was host to guests like Haley Lhamon, co-skipper and winner of the 2018 Race-to-Alaska. And who can forget Jerome Rand and his circumnavigation tales or Keith Kocher and those balance and core strengthening exercises? Yes, we’ve had some great speakers at meetings, but also at events like the 2019 Birthday Regatta, where we were critiqued, teased and taught by world renowned, Dave Perry.
I would like to thank all the Board Members over the last two years that have been so involved in making the club successful. I especially want to thank Bob Naylor for stepping up to run the Birthday Regatta, and Bill Hutchinson for coming “out of retirement” to fill the Staff Commodore position. I could not have done this without the support of my lovely wife Kim and my kids, so thanks also to them. And finally, thanks to all of you who volunteered to help out in ANY way over the last two years.
So what do we need going forward? We need you. In order to keep the momentum up we need people to take part, not just in the events themselves, but in the planning and running of the events. We need everyone to volunteer to help do one thing each year. That could be flip burgers at the Birthday Regatta or host one of the Happy Hours. Just one thing each year…many hands make light work!
I can’t begin to tell you how disappointed I am that we had to delay the Commodore’s Celebration and I’m not able to say this in person, but when the wind changes, we can get angry, or we can adjust the sails and do the best we can with the wind we’re given. I look forward to continuing to serve as a Staff Commodore and I’ll see you on the water!
