Monday, January 02, 2017

1/1/2017 - Sebago's Annual Frostbite Regatta




Flickr album from the day - click here!
It was an absolutely lovely January 1, 2017 here in NYC, slightly breezy but not bad, and beautiful blue skies with temperatures in the mid-40's. We had a great squad out on the water; 13 sea kayakers set out together at 10:30, another sea kayaker had set out earlier for a longer paddle, and there were also two sailors (Pat in his Goat Island Skiff, IAZ,P, and Chris in his Melonseed) and one racer out on the basin in his K1 (sorry I didn't get any pictures of him!). Great turnout! Most of the sea kayaking crew went to the Mill Basin Bridge, a few of us went on the the Four Sparrows Marsh. There was a fun twist to this as we had a member who moved to LA years ago, and she actually hadn't been there before - I think we started visiting Fours Sparrows regularly after it was threatened with development, despite a Forever Wild designation - somehow powers that be decided that the paperwork hadn't been filed properly so it was up for grabs. I don't know what the status is now, I should check on that, but I'm pretty sure that the bigger plans didn't make it through after community objections, and at this time it's still mostly the way it's been for a while. It's a really nice destination for a paddle, gives you about a six-mile paddle from the club, and it was fun having one of us see it for the first time. I should check with my friends who would be in the know to see whether the marsh got returned to the parks department, as it should've been all along.

I stayed out even a little bit longer than the small group that went there because I stopped to take pictures of the sailors.

One sad thing for me, I didn't do my New Year's Day rolling this year for the first time in many years; I didn't get back to doing my rolling after my April surgery the way I should have for some reason, and I couldn't make it to the pool session I'd hoped to get to the week before Christmas because I had a cold, so not trusting my rusty self, I decided to modify my annual ducking and just do some good full-immersion sculling instead. Water's still just as cold that way, and I didn't change from my lightweight hood to my heavier immersion hood, so got the full benefit of the plunge!

The food was great, the meeting was good (in fact I was delighted to hear that one of our old Old Town "war canoes" is being given a full restoration), and before and after the meeting, the boatbuilding committee was having an open house in the boat shed to let folks admire their progress on the club's new safety boat, Canarsienne. Boat shed's always open when the builders are in there working, but usually they're actually trying to get things done, but today was their day to show off their work. She's going to be a beauty!

Great day at the club and as always, a fine way to see in a new year. Happy New Year!


2 comments:

Unknown said...

It was in the lower 80s here yesterday but is getting down to the 50s tonight. So we're not quite on par with you guys, but it's tolerable.

Hope you have a great year.

bonnie said...

For an NYC January 1, the weather was great, no complaints at all. Drizzly on the 2nd and 3rd but I'll take that over a cold snap.

Hope you have a great year too, with lots of good stories!