Greetings!
With the 4th of July on Friday, Oakcliff is busy preparing to say goodbye to our Inshore Acorns and prepare our patriotic 4th celebrations. Our Inshore Acorns will be leaving us on Thursday afternoon. Everyone is definitely sad to see them leave.
In addition, Oakcliff will kick off the holiday weekend on Thursday evening with a pre-race serenade for the Classics by the Oyster Bay Music Festival. For more details about our Acorns and OBMF, please read below.
Also, don't forget to sign up for Tuesday night match race drills, Wednesday night fleet racing, and Thursday Classics!
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Goodbye to our Inshore Acorns!
On Thursday, our Inshore Acorns will be heading home after an exciting three weeks of learning all about match racing at Oakcliff.
Austin Colpaert, Stuart Henry, Conner Harding, and Kate Bjerregaard will returning home to share their new sailing knowledge. Our fifth Acorn, Kat Shiber, will be staying for our high performance camp that starts next week, so she will not be leaving us just yet.
Over the past few weeks, the Acorns have developed a solid foundation of sailing knowledge that will serve them well into the future. From sailing in Tuesday night drills to repairing spinnakers in the shop, to winning races, in three short weeks, the Acorns excelled and are truly one of the best performing Acorn teams Oakcliff has ever had.
They participated in several match racing events including the Rose Cup, a National Youth Match Racing Event as well as ISAF ranked Grade 4. At these events, they experienced several boats including both Match 40s and Sonars.
The Acorns also had time to experience other boats outside of racing. On Monday, the Acorns sailed Nacra 17's with Olympic hopefuls Sarah Newberry and John Casey.
They also planned, budgeted and sailed an overnight delivery on Dolphin, one of the Classics, from Oyster Bay to Mystic CT. Just today they were out on the Ker 11.3 from rigging the new-to-them boat to jibing the spinnaker to pumping the tiller to surf over 10 knots in nearly 30 knots of wind speed.
In addition to their fresh experiences and new-found knowledge, the Acorns made connections. After being noticed at the various competitions, they are already being recruited to sail on other teams. We hope that the Acorns take full advantage of these opportunities and continue towards domination in the match racing world.
We wish them the best of luck with their future sailing careers and expect to see them back at Oakcliff soon!
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Oyster Bay Music Festival Comes to OBMC
On Thursday, July 3rd at 5pm, the Oyster Bay Music Festival will be aboard Oakcliff's Tomahawk at the dock at the Oyster Bay Marine Center to play a pre-race serenade for our classic sailors.
This concert is one of 31 concerts that the Oyster Bay Music Festival will be playing from June 28th to July 6th. The performing artists range from 11 to 24 years old. During the concert at OBMC, the artists will be complimenting the natural wonders of the Long Island Sound.
In the 18th century, musicians serenaded royalty with Handel's Water Music as performers and audiences were on the barges on the Thames River. This will be the featured and very appropriate music played at OBMC.
Please join us at the dock at OBMC for this unique opportunity!
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Triple Win for Vlad and Chris K.
Chris Kennedy and Vlad Shablinski won 1st in class, 1st overall, and line honors on Saturday in the Stratford Shoals Race this past weekend.
The 83rd Stratford Shoals Race was hosted by Riverside Yacht Club. It is a 45 mile race to the Stratford Shoal lighthouse and back to Riverside Yacht Club.
In the light air that seems to be a trend this summer, Chris and Vlad started at the Race Committee and sailed at rhumb line with a genoa. For them this was a brilliant tactical move, because the other boats in the fleet choose to fly spinnakers, which pulled them towards the Connecticut shore and lighter breeze.
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We hope to see you soon!
Sincerely,
Samantha Pilz
& The Oakcliff Sailing Teams
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USWMRC Housing Needed!
On July 10-13th, Oakcliff will be hosting the US Women's Match Racing Championship. We need housing for 7 teams and 6 umpires during the event.
If you are interested in the housing a few sailors or even a full team, please email Bill Simon here.
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Veterans Wanted!
On Saturday, August 9th, the NYST Marine Corps Association will be
hosting a regatta. The race will take place around Shelter Island. The
Duclay family will be providing the Hobies, training, and gear for the
event. Veterans are required to
provide their own food, bathing suit, and entry fee.
If you are interested in the race,
please email us here. Spots are on a first come first served basis!
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Flash From the Past
Beta-Acorns Jacon Mayer and Kevin Dooley are both using their Oakcliff- gleaned skills to coach others.
Jacon has recently landed as the adult sailing coach at Larchmont. He had taken a few years to go back to
the mountains, which is his other love, but we are happy he has come out of the woods back to the shore. Bonus
is that he will be just across the sound and be able to pop into Oakcliff to see
the program as he envisioned. Jacon was the one who initiated the business plan to incorporate the upstairs bunk house. Speaking of which, we are still
in significant need for donors for this project. Please email or call Dawn at
interest in supporting this capital campaign.
Kevin Dooley is helping out at Eastern YC in Marblehead and they are introducing adult match race drills
there this summer. I wonder if they are also match racing on Tuesday nights? Flattery is the best compliment.
A more recent SapGrad, John Colburn, is now a boat captain, and after dropping off the race crew in Bermuda, he is sailing to Europe. You can track his progress here.
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Name Your Shower
We are almost done building the bunkhouse upstairs but we desperately need your help. Oakcliff has not done a captial campaign before but now is the time.
We have had generous support and have raised over 20% of the budget but there is still 80% left to go. We are offering naming opportunities for the bunk-rooms, bunks, shower rooms and yes - even the stalls. Your support will help house visiting match racing athletes, Acorns and Saplings who work so hard to learn while also keeping the boats running and aspiring Olympians. Now is the time to wave your flag and patriotically donate to help us win medals. Go USA!
Call 415 760-7642 or email race@oakcliffsailing.org to discuss your donation
Oakcliff Sailing is a high-performance training center for sailors who have progressed beyond traditional coaching methods. We are a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization and located in Oyster Bay, NY. In 2013, Oakcliff Sailing was named a US Sailing Team Sperry Top-Sider National Training Center.
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