Day Sailer Fleet 123: September 2014

The 30th Annual Dunedin Cup was held on September 27, 2014 at the Dunedin Boat Club. The venue was the beautiful St. Joseph's Sound adjacent to Caladesi Island and Honeymoon Island.

Stu and Janet enjoying a pre race snack

     The Day Sailers and Windmills started together on the line with 6 Day Sailers and 5 Windmills. We also shared the course with beach cats, Lasers and Sunfish.
     We had a decent start with flukey wind at 6-10 with thunderstorms looming in the eastern sky. Mark and Lil got a great jump on the fleet with a good start, good tactics and good boat speed. They had smooth sailing around the course while the other Day Sailers battled each other and the Windmills. We definitely experienced the calm before the storm as the dark clouds moved closer. Mark and Lil eked over the line in first place. Chris and Dave managed to come from behind to squeeze out a second place just a few seconds in front of Stu and Andy. All the boats managed to finish as new wind came up. As soon as the race committee adjusted the course the wind switched back which had the storms coming at us again. With lightening all around, the races were abandoned
and the sailors were sent to shore. The "one race constitutes a series" rule applied.
     Beer trucks, food trucks and awards at the Dunedin Boat Club followed. No stinking storms dampened the spirit of the party. Mark also had his signature stash of spiced rum.

Boat #	Skipper	Crew	Race	Pts	Pl
61	Mark Rother	Lil Epstein	1	1	1
13	Chris Kelly	Dave Kelly	2	2	2
11835	Stu Smith	Andy Reeves	3	3	3
14024	Bruce Kreutzer	Janet Kreutzer	4	4	4
0	Mike Richardson	(JJ) James Jinright	5	5	5
1052	Eric Kendall	Nate	6	6	6


First Place Team Mark Rother & Lil Epstein

The gang coming down

Stu and Andy

Bruce and Janet

Mike and JJ

Mark and Lil

Thanks to the Race Committee

Dave Kelly hailing the wind gods. They answered with a bolt of lightening. Bruce looking for something up there.

1st, 2nd and 3rd place skippers with their cups on the right.

Chris, Bruce, Dave, Eric and his wife and Janet.

October 11th is Dunedin Boat Club gulf Race- no Day Sailer Race
Next Race is Saturday, October 18th at Belleair Causeway. Noon skippers meeting.

Welcome back to another season of racing! Opening day was challenging with fluky easterlies, then a southerly, then easterly, then south west-- whatever. We had four boats for the 1st race of the season and a good practice for the Dunedin Cup coming up on Sept. 27.

Stu and Andy

Mark and Bob

Bruce and Janet

Chris and Dave

We got in four races with many lead changes due to the fluky winds. The Kelly's ruled the day with 4 firsts. The Kruetzer's were going for a second but decided to do another leg instead of finishing-- that hurt-- but we have all done that.