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June 12 2018

'The Neuse Juice'

Volumn 45 Number 6

Coming Events 





Chuck Gordon, 

Commodore


The Commodore's Log
 

JUNE 2018 – NSA TIME!!!!!

It is summertime in North Carolina and I want to help you with the daily weather report. From now until October you can expect scattered showers in the morning with a possible thunderstorm and in the afternoon increased possibility of showers and thunderstorms!! Point being: check the weather before leaving the dock and keep an eye on the skies while on the water. We want you to be safe and enjoy your boating time.

Memorial Day in Ocracoke was a GREAT WEEKEND!!!! We ended up with about 28 vessels, 60+ people and a few guest which made for a fun Social! About half of our participants were new members and I thank each of you for joining the NSA and contributing to our fun time!! Thanks to Buster Kenny for his help as a Cruise Captain and to Vice Commodores of Cruising Pat and Jeff for their support.

As we head into the heat of the summer there are several events coming up. Jeff and Pat have planned a great Week Long (Plus) Cruise which is followed by the county wide Croaker Festival. July brings the Dog Day Cruise (July 6) and on July 28 the Dinghy Poker Run (please contact Alice Petree to volunteer to help).

I thank the Bridge and Directors for their continued contributions to our club. Every contribution is important but at this mid year point I want to thank Vice Commodores of Communications Bill and Susanne Lovelace for the important work they do for us. They are our IT specialist, the Web administrators, editors and producers of the Neuse Juice, involved in in most all info posted on the site, sending out mass emails and many more operational duties! As well as being advisors and monitors to keep me out of trouble !!!! Thank them the next time you see them!! A big ‘Thank You” goes to another member of our communication team Kathy Kenny! Kathy maintains our Facebook Account and is the one posting information about NSA events and activities and monitors that only NSA members can join the group. We are very fortunate to have these people keeping our lines of communication open!!!

2018 is half over and we are looking to a great finish to this year. I have formed a committee of Carl Crothers, Sharon Stephenson and me to identify our 2019 leaders. We would like your assistance in putting together a list of folks who can lead the NSA in 2019 and for the next several years. If you are interested in continuing on or joining the Bridge or Directors or volunteering to help in other club activities please contact Carl, Sharon or me . We are in a growth period as a club and need more people to help assure the continued growth.

The lovely and talented Immediate Past Commodore Sharon and I look forward to seeing each of you soon.


Chuck Gordon
s/v Pelikan
Commodore 

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 Memorial Day Cruise

MEMORIAL DAY CRUISE 2018

Our gathering in Ocracoke for Memorial Day was a great weekend! We had about 28 vessels and 60+ plus people make it to the island! The weather wasn't perfect but most folks were able to get there and then chose their weather window to depart. The Saturday afternoon social was well attended with great appetizers and drinks and fun had by all! We were very happy to see that about half of those present were new NSA members and I thank each of you for joining and supporting the club ( as well as all of our long time members!). Thanks to Vice Commodores of Cruising Pat and Jeff for their support and to Cruise Captain Buster Kenny for his assistance. Hopefully everyone enjoyed their island time and we look forward to our next adventure to Silver Lake ( which should be Halloween)! More pictures are here in the gallery

Chuck Gordon, s/v Pelikan
Buster Kenny, s/v Cool Change

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 Dog Days Cruise


Dog Days Cruise, July 6-8, Belhaven

After a planned one-night stop at the end of the week-long, we return to the renovated River Forest Manor & Marina in Belhaven for this year’s Dog Days Cruise, July 6-8. Belhaven is a favorite NSA destination with its easy water access, small-town friendliness, and good food.

We have 13 boats registered for the cruise so far and I have provided the boat list to the dock master. I will update him as the date nears. There’s still time to register; you can do so here. Also, if you’re registered but your plans change, please let us know.

The River Forest Manor & Marina has undergone extensive renovations since a group of local investors bought the property in 2014. The historic manor house, built in 1899, attracted celebrities, politicos and wealthy stakeholders in its day, including American actor and dancer James Cagney, cartoonist Robert Ripley, businessman Harvey Firestone and British model Twiggy, and gained the attention of national newspapers and magazines, including National Geographic. Today, the manor house offers room accommodations and is a popular wedding and special-event venue.

The marina, which is to starboard just as you pass the Belhaven breakwater, offers deep-water slips and bulkhead docking at $1.75 per foot. Power is $7 per night for 30-amp and $10 for 50-amp (10% discount on dockage and electric for BoatUS members). The marina building has an air-conditioned bath house and free laundry. Wi-fi is also available, as are fuel and pump-out services. It’s a short walk to downtown, but the marina offers complimentary electric golf cars.

We will provide weather and navigational guidance as the cruise nears, but we’ll use the standard float plan to Belhaven via the Bay River, Hobucken Cut (ICW), across the Pamlico River and up the Pungo River, a distance of about 40nm.

We’ll have a social at the marina on Saturday at 4 pm. Please provision to bring an appetizer or dessert. The NSA will provide a good selection of beer and wine.

We hope to see you on the Dog Days Cruise!

Cruise Captains
Carl and Donna Crothers
s/v Captiva

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Dinghy Poker Run

The July 28th Dinghy Poker Run: Your Chance to Give Back to Oriental

It's not too early to start thinking about having fun and helping a good cause. 

To learn more about  the Dinghy Poker Run, please read the event description hereThe proceeds from this year’s event will be donated to Heartworks, a cause near and dear to our very own Laurie Sampson. 

It takes a village to make this event a success, so I am recruiting volunteers now.  There are opportunities to help well in advance and lots of jobs to be done the day of the event.  

AUCTION ITEMS:  As you do your Spring cleaning keep an eye out for nice quality items in new or nearly new condition to be used for prizes, and the silent or live auctions.  Possibilities include: Antiques, jewelry, boating items, artwork, gift baskets, vacation home/time share weekend (or week ), Gift certificates for stores or restaurants.

SPONSOR SOLICITATION:  Approach businesses that you support to make monetary or in-kind donations

DOCK MASTER: Staff a local dock on the day of the event to be the dealer and recorder for the Poker Hands.  This is a fun job which may include the use of water guns or jello shots.

FOOD:  We purchase main course and sides but we need people to set-up and serve.

DESERTS: We need people to make deserts.  This year, finger friendly please: cookies, cupcakes, fruit; you get the idea.

SET UP and BREAKDOWN:  Set-up would be early Sat morning and involves moving a small tent, tables and chairs to the site and setting them up

MISC: Selling Poker Hands, setting up/labeling auction items, recording auction results/receiving payments, raffle tickets,

If you are willing to help, either by being a lead for a particular task or by just being a worker bee please contact Alice Petree 703-628-8123 or appinfiona@yahoo.com

This is another opportunity for NSA to give back to the community while having a great time. COME JOIN THE FUN!

Alice Petree
Organizer, NSA Dinghy Poker Run
s/v Highland Fox

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Communications

Brief NSA Website Orientation for New Members

The turnout at the Memorial Day Cruise showed that are many new active members in the NSA this year which is great! For those new members or even those members who haven't used the website much, the following is a brief description of useful features on the NSA website that just make membership easier and fun.   All the features described here require you to login ('login' in the upper right side of the home page)

Your profile: After logging in, access your profile by clicking on your name on the upper right of the home page. Be sure this section is filled out as completely as you can, as this is the information the club uses to contact you. And don't forget to add a picture (or favorite representation) of yourself by clicking "avatar" and uploading your photo.

Use Forums: Forums enable club members to communicate with each other on specific topics. The club uses forums a lot for cruises, so at the time of a cruise, we can communicate specifically with cruise participants, rather than the entire club. Event specific forums are linked to each event. Be sure to subscribe to a cruising forum if you are following it: simply click on "subscribe" in the middle of the forum page.  Forums are also accessible under the "members center" menu at the top of the home page. There are forum topics ranging from sailing techniques to cruising etiquette--an interesting place to learn. 

Post pictures to the Gallery: The current website enables you to upload your photos from NSA events right to the website. There is a gallery for each event, and a large 'upload' button at the top of the page from which you can upload photo files. If you are on your iPhone, after clicking "upload", the  "choose file" button gives you the option to access your photo library so you can choose photos directly . While many members post photos on the NSA Facebook page, not all members subscribe to Facebook so be sure to put some of your great photos on the NSA Gallery to share with all members, and have a place to look at NSA fun all year long. 

Lastly, when the weather is too awful to be outside sailing, spend a little time clicking through the menus and links to appreciate a lot more of what the club has to offer. 

Bill and Susanne Lovelace
Vice Commodore Communications
s/v Trio

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Misto

Misto joins the select few who have visited Minerva Reef

We departed New Zealand one evening, with weather routing from our friend Chris Tibbs, who we met on last years WARC.  We knew we were going to have to motor a lot, but were not prepared for the washing machine-like conditions we had for the first three days.  Suffice it to say that it was ghastly - how we felt exacerbated by not having done much sailing for the past months.  Our instrument problems started soon after departing and the new Raymarine Axiom Pro kept losing the GPS fix.  Howard came up with a work-around, using the second chartplotter for the GPS, which worked, so we concluded there was an issue with the main unit.  Four days out at 6am when we wanted to understand what a boat was doing that was visible off our port side, the radar decided to stop working.  Coincidence, or was this linked to the chartplotter issue?

We arrived at Minerva Reef, which is approximately 300nm from Fiji and Tonga, on a grey and rainy afternoon.  Without radar to see the waves breaking on the reef, we skirted South Minerva Reef quite closely to see how it matched our charts.  It all seemed to be pretty accurate and so we approached North Minerva Reef fairly confidently, but with Navionics, Open CPN and google earth maps from GE to CAP as well as SASPlanet, all running on the chart table!

Minerva Reef is an oasis in the middle of nowhere and was really welcome after our uncomfortable 5 days passage from New Zealand. There were three or four boats there with us, including a catamaran we had met in Whangarei.  In the morning we walked on the reef in about 6” of water as the tide was rising.  There was a huge sense of achievement and wonder to be standing on this living reef miles from anywhere.

After this brief respite we continued on to Fiji, changing our plans from entering in Suva to going to Vuda Marina, where there was better access to Raymarine technical support. Frustratingly, the GPS appeared to be an easy fix with a setting needing to be changed, but the radar appeared to have died.  After a lot of research this is not going to be fixed until Australia as we want to get the latest Doppler radar, which has advantages of low power consumption and automatically showing which targets are coming towards you and which are going away.

While the work was going on, Ros took a quick trip back to the US to visit our daughter in Denver as her 30th birthday was approaching.  This also meant that she was able to get a new autopilot and course computer - needed to fully integrate with the Axiom Pro and the anticipated new radar - as well as other sundry bits and pieces which are much cheaper in the US than in Fiji.

We are now cruising for a few days before our crew, Mick and Helen arrive.  We are staying around Viti Levu and Howard will be doing a shark dive out of Pacific Harbor, which is quite well known in diving circles. Last night we enjoyed some traditional Fijian food and entertainment on the island of Likuri, also known as Robinson Crusoe Island. Traditionally the meat, fish and vegetables are wrapped in banana and coconut leaves, then cooked in a pit, with hot stones.  The Fijian ladies dance in a manner reminiscent of Hawaiian dancing, and the men in a way similar to the New Zealand Hakka.  All in all it was a fun way to start back into the cruising life.

Regards

Ros and Howard
s/v Misto

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