Shields Fleet 9 sailors and supporters:
In case you missed it, I am reproducing the gist of my report delivered last week at our recent Annual Meeting. We’ve also published the 2020 Annual Meeting Minutes – 12-2-20 here, which include election of officers. Most of our 2020 group is staying on, joined by one new recruit, Heather Shaver (181) who will serve as our At-Large Director. A big welcome to Heather, and a big thank you you to David Bush-Brown (121) for his excellent service in that role this year.
I’d like to start by thanking each of the members of our fleet board for their hard work this year. Specifically:
– Mike Toppa, executive officer, for taking on and completing the lifting frame project from beginning to end, a monumental task we are all very grateful for. Mike also recruited temporary race committee, arranged drone video, and helped bring new members into the fleet.
– Bill Doyle, secretary, for completing the survey, coming up with new ideas, writing the weekly newsletters and pulling together the year-end awards event…among many duties he managed.
– Ron Oard, as treasurer, managed the finances, arranged dues payments, kept us on track generally and served as a VP of the Shields Class Association.
– Ted Slee, past fleet captain, has been an all-around fleet promoter, is also a Fleet rep as a Shields Class VP and Tech. Committee member, and is committee chair to host the 2022 Nationals and 2021 New Englands.
– David Bush-Brown, at-large board member, was a keen sounding board and catalyst of what turned out to be a signature event of the season, the NYYC Annual Regatta.
We had many challenges last spring, but this fleet responded. I’d like to thank our supporters throughout the community who also helped pull our season together when things looked bleak:
- Brad Read at Sail Newport, providing leadership in working with the DEM;
- Tim Healy for running three nights of informal June racing;
- Simon Davidson for getting Ida Lewis commissioned as quickly as possible
- And Bill O’Hanley for rolling with the punches and providing great RC work
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It was my blue-sky goal last winter to grow Fleet 9 back to 30 registered boats with 20 on the start line in two years’ time. After I said it out loud, I started to realize it was a pretty ambitious goal. But this year we experienced some surprising success—we had 20 boats on the line 3 or 4 times this summer and built the Aloha weekend fleet to a healthy 8-10 boats. We had an uptick in registrations with 24 boats and that was with two other boats staying on the hard. We gained four new owners/boats in 2020 (17, 151, 204 & 258), and we have three new boats joining the fleet next year – 66, 101, and 200 – and other prospects out there.
We have an exciting development challenge to report. An anonymous donor has offered substantial funding for one or two boats to be purchased and donated to Sail Newport, for use by youth and young adult sailors. The idea is to create a gateway to Shields sailing for younger generations. While there was no official vote, comments at our annual meeting were all in favor of this initiative, and we agreed the most difficult aspect of this will likely be finding moorings as even Sail Newport has limited moorage. Anyone interested in working on this , please contact me directly.
In closing, I congratulate all who made this season a success. Let’s build on our momentum for 2021!
– John Burnham, Fleet Captain
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