By the time you receive this email newsletter the season will have rolled over and we are officially in Spring. Another milestone came and went as we moved into this year 2014.  We began our 6^th year of operation.  To our amazement we have completed five boats all of which were raffled off to provide us with a portion of our operating expense. In this newsletter I will introduce you to our latest effort of building this years boat, a sharpie. This is a boat with a hard chine and flat bottom with a nice rocker, the fore and aft curve of the bottom.

Once again I will be alerting you to a mailing you will receive asking you to renew your membership. I find this a difficult request simply because so many of you have made your yearly membership contribution without asking anything in return except that we keep up the effort at building traditional craft.  I am grateful for your continued support. 

Our last raffle boat was the most complex one we have produced to date.  I am particularly proud of many of the fine details that were incorporated into her construction. I am therefore taking the liberty of looking back at the items for which I am the most proud.

You have a standing invitation to come visit with us as we pour over plans in order to seek the best solutions to minute details every Wednesday and Saturday. It is an interesting process to observe as small groups form to worry out the resolution of details.

At EECBS we not only refurbish classic wooden boats and build new ones, we also sail them.  So when a group of us, under Ray's direction, hauled the Susan Constant, our 19' Buzzards Bay sloop, out of Three-Mile Harbor on Sunday morning, October 27, we were proud to witness the end of another successful sailing season. 

The season had begun back in June with the painting of the standing rigging and the outside of her hull, including the usual anti-fouling coating and sealing of her lead keel.  She was in the water before the July 4^th weekend, and she got little enough rest thereafter.  Nearly a dozen Society members and an equal number of their guests made her a familiar figure in Three-Mile Harbor itself, and beyond, with trips to Coecles Harbor, Sag Harbor, and elsewhere along the perimeter of Gardiner's Bay.  And it was a rare trip indeed when she returned without having drawn appreciative comments from other sailors in those waters, struck by her classic lines and grace under sail.

Two highlights in particular mark the season just passed.  One is our acquisition of a new 3.5 hp Mercury outboard to move her reliably out of her slip at the dock or through the channel into Gardner's Bay, whenever strong tidal currents and insufficient winds called for auxiliary power.   The other is one we have all come to count on and respect: namely, our Fleet Captain, Kent Miller, who checked us in, checked us out, and always ensured that she was ready to go. 

Now she is parked at her usual place outside our shop and will get a scraping-down and repainting, inside and out, before our next season, when we hope even more Society members will take the opportunity to take her out  for a spin.