Since my last letter we have really gotten into the spring sailing season. Five NYRA boats went to Charleston this year for race week. They were Blue Print, Echo, Brown Eyed Girl, Frequent Flyer and EZ. Congratulations to Frequent Flyer for winning the B36.7 class. A few weeks later NYRA had the winning Spinnaker A boat at Bald Head Island Regatta. Congratulations to Jay Hood and the Blue Print crew on a job well done. If you haven't been to BHIR before, you should consider it for next year. Bill Jarvis and I did race committee this year and Jay's crew, Bill and I all had a great time and were very impressed with the facilities and hospitality that Bald Head provided.

Locally we just completed the Clark Cup, which is an ICRC event. The race had a good one design turnout and 15 to 20 PHRF boats on the river. The conditions were challenging with 20 to 30 knot winds providing for some very exciting racing. As usual, Blackbeard's did a great job hosting the event. Ken Gurganus and crew always do a great job of hosting their races and it is certainly should be appreciated by the racers. NYRA came in second in the ICRC standings. As usual, ODC won, beating NYRA out by 3 points. Results are in! The next ICRC race is the Dragons Breath in Oriental on August 5 and 6. If we get our best team out surely we can knock ODC out of the ICRC winner's circle.

The next NYRA events are the NYRA Invitational on May 20 and 21. It will be run out of Northwest Creek Marina. There will be two days of racing and a BBQ dinner on Saturday night. The NOR is available here.

Finally, the big event that I have been working on is NCYRA in Beaufort over Memorial Day weekend. This is the premier ocean racing regatta in NC and NYRA is the host club. It will consist of two days of racing and a BBQ dinner on Saturday night over looking Taylor's Creek. It should be a great event and I would love to see a lot of the river boats make it down for some ocean racing. The NOR is available here.

As an organizational note, we are consider moving 2007 NCYRA from Memorial Day to some other date, possibly with a tie in to BHIR. Please let me know your thoughts on this. Would you be more or less likely to race if it was not over Memorial Day weekend? What could we do to increase the turnout for next year?

As always, any feedback, good or bad, is welcome.

Lee King
NYRA Commodore
lrk30470@yahoo.com