Jan's thanks for a great year!

Hi all y’all,

This is what I wrote the day of the October 17 meeting to be read and I understand it was paraphrased by Max so here’s the whole thingie for your review.

I do wish I could be at the meeting tonight to wish Max well on his stepping down – teehee, I can’t imagine my experiences with SSS without Max so . . . and wishing our new commodore success as he takes the helm. I am soooooooooo happy to still be serving on the board with Jackie, Matt and our new treasurer Tony. If anyone has any influence with Ruben, I’d love all y’all to talk him into staying on as “t-shirt guru.”

Now you just gotta indulge me here for a few minutes and hopefully Max or Jim can add some serious Southern accent to this epistle.

First of all, congrats to all y’all for a great season and for treating me soooooooo well on the deck. All y’all are winners in my book and I wouldn’t be there if you weren’t racing so thanks!

I wanna thank all my wonderful race deck volunteers. Starting with the 3BF I could never ever have pulled that race off without Matt and various other volunteers – Steen Moller, Mike Farrell, Mike Meloy, Ramona and Randy Garrett, Leah Pepe, Rich Hudnut, Sandor Schoichet and his international students. If I left anyone out, please accept my apologies. Remember, that’s almost a year ago so . . . I am challenged to remember all who were there that day.

Then came Corinthian which had 4 – yep, 4 trained US Sailing race deck people and we still flunked over earlies so . . . Fred Kamp stepped up to do the computer with Matt. Donna was PRO and Kristen Waltour was there to help. Commodore Kristen was there that day too and Roger was on gun. We had a great day and specifically remember Matt calling Tony on NOW AND ZEN and we are watching him try to finish and here’s Matt trying to find out where he was. Sometimes communication on the deck can be a challenge!

Then there’s the whole postponing and rescheduling of the Singlehanded Farallones and the Stand-Down Marathon. Thanks bunches to Jackie and Max for all their work on those events. Oh, we couldn’t have gotten through many of the races without Jackie’s fabulous doughnuts from Fluff Dream in Berkeley. Then there’s also all the fabulous work Jackie did for the Round the Rocks race.

I am not gonna name any more race deck specifcs and just say overall big huge thanks to all my volunteers and toward the end of the season we picked up several new gems, Don McCrea on gun, David Nabors and his daughters Annika and Char. David and Char have been with me on the last 3 races and what a hoot they are to work with. Char’s definitely being groomed by me to take my place Several people showed up specifically for one race like Don Martin and Al Germain and Chris Case did both days of Vallejo with me.

So suffice it to say I couldn’t do race deck without all my wonderful volunteers and please, please, please keep’em coming. Steen Moller gets the award for the most valued. Between being the only one at every race deck and then offering up X-DREAM for the Vallejo 1-2 committee boat, I’m hard pressed to name anyone else for this year’s top award.

Of course I couldn’t shut up without saying something about January 26, 2013, the 3BF. I’m gonna need all the help I can get again ‘cause I have a feeling Matt is gonna race this next one so . . .

Everyone have a wonderful holiday season and see you in January. All y’all are welcome to visit me in AZ too.