Sometimes you just have to pinch yourself to believe something is true. Oakcliff is building American leaders through sailing.  One of the places our Sapling trainees are looking to go is the America's Cup.  Solomon Krevans is there.

Solomon was scheduled to be back as an RA this summer and then he called saying that if we felt he should, he would honor his commitment to Oakcliff but that he had an opportunity to try out for the Youth America's Cup and it was the team that was training on base with Oracle and that they got to mix and match and work with the professionals.  It took me about 15 minutes to qualify the opportunity and call him back and say - Solomon you MUST do this!  I am so proud of him and he is doing spectacularly.   He is now training in bow position 1 and 2 on American Youth Force and this is from an email he sent out after his first day.

"I got to sail on the 45 today.  No warmup long tacks they threw me straight into laps. Oh and it was blowing 15-20kts.  They had me on bow 2 then bow 1. There's a lot going on and by the end of the day I had those two jobs mapped out pretty well but it's going to take a couple more days until I can actually get an idea of what's going on around me. 

It's crazy you have your head down, working hard, not fully aware of what you're doing until you get rotated off onto the chase boat and then you're watching the boat casually go by at over 25kts and then it hits you that just a few minutes ago you were doing that."

Max St. Maurice has used Oakcliff as a springboard.  Business lessons from Oaklciff helped him negotiate to become a part owner of the International Sailing Academy located in Puerto Vallarta Mexico.  Our visit  last summer to see the Multi One Designs (MODs) in NYC helped spark an interest so when he heard rumors that there was a MOD coming to Mexico he called Oakcliff and we connected him with the project manager who is a friend of ours. Before we could blink, Max has been hired to work on the boat in Mexico and in San Francisco.

 Now we can't take full credit as Max being fluent in French, English and Spanish certainly helped on a boat owned by an American, sailing in Mexico with French experts on-board. But we can certainly send our congratulations to Max!

A 2013 Sapling, Chris Smith is a sailor and technologist.  He graduated from the University of Tennessee in 2009, traveled to 24 countries in 6 months with an "Around the World Ticket" and just finished work at National Instruments, a tech company that makes engineering instrumentation for integrating sensors with computer systems.  

He raced 420s and J22s in college while president of the sailing club and moved on to skiffs and high performance catamarans competing recently in the 49er class at the Miami Olympic Class Regatta and finishing tenth at the F16 Catamaran Nationals.  He's primarily sailed dinghy's and smaller keelboats at numerous regional and club regattas around the southeast including Thistles, J22s, J24s, and J80s.  He enjoys long walks on the beach and charter captaining friends and family around the Caribbean.

His goal this summer is to become a better sailor, apply his engineering knowledge to gain experience with marine electronics and boat testing technology, and to meet a smokin' hot sailing babe.

Chris Poole of Riptide Racing faced a very deep and even field of competitors and fought out a win at the Spring Clinegatta.  Second place was the Oakcliff Travel Team of Q Match Racing.    In winning, Poole secured his final berth in the Grand Slam Series.  

The full story is here but a couple things of note, once again the team with the most women onboard won.  Also Oakcliff is attracting sailors like honey attracts bees - Chris has moved to Oyster Bay to work with Harken and train with Oakcliff!

Final note - huge thanks to 42degrees photography. Thousands of shots are on his facebook page

Please come and join the fun!  Tonight's Tuesday Drills are going to see all six boats out on the water for a balmy training session.  Tomorrow night looks to be just as beautiful for the fleet racing with coaching.  After racing on Wednesday the debrief is at Sagamore and they have food service and open bar. 

This weekend we will have four boats racing the Round Block Island Race and have actually farmed some sailors out onto other boats!  Is it possible, we need more boats? :-)

With this plethora of sailors, I will be 'home base' which will allow me to race on the classics.   Please sign up so we know you are coming for either Saturday or Sunday.  Don't forget that Hunt's financial seminar is at 10 on Saturday at 2 South Street and at 10 on Sunday you can show up on the dock at OBMC and go match racing for classics.     A special new shirt is available to classic supporters ONLY.   Call 516 802 0368 or email for more information.

NEXT weekend we have a Grade 5 and there are plenty of spots open for teams as well as individual sailors.  Sign up HERE

Get your sailing sorted ANYTIME by going to the calendar at http://www.oakcliffsailing.org.  You can also make your donations there.  We can't keep doing this without your generous support.  If you have any questions feel free to email or call us on 516 802 0368

 

 

 

High Five Emily to Ann