Each year about this time, the Cow Bay Cruising Association, aka Thirsty Thursday, holds it annual meeting. This is to plan for the upcoming season and award the teams from last year that had podium finishes. On Thursday, April 21, the group got together at Manhasset Bay YC (MBYC) for their annual meeting. Anthony Viola, MBYC member, chaired the evening. After a discussion about important issues for these “big boat” racers, it was time for awards.
According to Anthony Viola, the top boats for the 2015 season are: In Division I Spring Series: 1. Bob Schwartz, Nordlys, MBYC, 2. Al Albrecht, Avalanche, PWYC, and 3. Arthur H. Buhr III, Leverage, PWYC. Division II, Spring Series: 1. Chuck McCarthy, Speed D8, PWYC, 2. Marc Epstein, Vision, North Shore YC (NSYC), and 3. Charlie Cannam, EnGarde, NSYC. Division III, Spring Series: 1. Robert Ebenau, En Passant, NSYC, 2. Richard Raskin, Osprey, NSYC, 3. Bruce Joseph, On the Beam, MBYC.
The top boats in the Summer Series: Division I: 1. Leverage, 2. Nordlys, and 3. Avalanche. Division II: 1. Speed D8, 2. Vision, and 3. Eric Weintraub/David Deutsch, Scarlet. Division III: 1. EnPassant, 2. On the Beam, and 3. Her C Gem. There was no Fall Series.
The Thirsty Thursday group has been around for a long time and it is a great bunch of racers who like their competition out on the water but come back and enjoy each other’s company at their clubs. If you have just moved to the area and would like to explore skippering your own boat or help out as crew, or if you just want to get back into sailing after a hiatus, contact Anthony Viola at AJViola@mintz.com.
There is a really interesting story posted on the Guardian. It’s all about a message in a bottle that was sent 108 years ago, with the promise that whoever found it would receive a shilling. The communication, thrown into the sea by a Plymouth biologist in 1906, was found by a German woman. When the marine biologist threw his message in a bottle into the sea, asking whoever found it to contact him, he wasn’t expecting a speedy response. The woman who found it has been given the reward promised in 1908 by the scientific institution that has inherited the debt of honor—a shilling. The bottle was among more than 1,000 thrown into the North Sea by George Parker Bidder as part of his research into the patterns of currents. This one was part of a batch from Nov. 30, 1906, and was found 108 years, four months and 18 days later in 2015 by a retired postal worker Marianne Winkler, on holiday on Amrun, one of Germany’s North Frisian islands.
Inside she could see a message reading “break the bottle,” but she and her husband, Horst, tried and failed to get the message out without destroying its container. Eventually they extracted a postcard with a message in English, German and Dutch, asking for it to be returned to the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth, Devon, England. The Winklers could see it was old, but had no idea how old, as the card was undated. They posted it off. The association, founded in 1884, still exists and is a renowned marine research institution. Although there was astonishment when it arrived, Bidder’s name was familiar in Plymouth. He died in 1954 at the age of 91. His messages in bottles helped him prove that the deep sea current in the North Sea flowed from east to west. Guy Baker, the communications officer at the association, said they were determined Winkler would get the proper reward. “We found an old shilling, I think we got it on eBay,” said Baker. “We sent it to her with a letter saying thank you.” Winkler now has the honor of confirmation by Guinness World Records of her find—her bottle comfortably beat the last record holder, a bottle found in Shetland in 2013 that had been adrift for 99 years and 43 days (source: www.theguardian.com).
