Inaugural Post

Since January 1st, 2005, The Times Picayune has published two stories regarding competitive sailing on the lake and the Gulf Coast. This apparently, in the mind's of the paper's editors, places our sport on equal footing with Bull Riding, Dog Jumping, Bocce, Concrete Canoeing, Kayak Fishing and Bobsledding, all of which had between one and two articles in the paper within the same time period. Whereas League Softball and League Bowling were covered 50+ times.

Here's the complete article breakdown and count (Excluding football, baseball, etc.)*:
• League Softball: 50+
• League Bowling: 50+
• Triathlon: 6
• Bull riding: 2
• Bocce: 2
• Skateboarding: 2
• Sailing:2**
• Dog jumping: 1
• Ping pong: 1
• Concrete canoeing: 1
• Kayak fishing: 1
• Rugby: 1
• Bobsledding: 1
• Ultimate frisbee: 1
* All information culled from Newsbank.com
**Excludes articles regarding Olympic Silver Medalist Johnny Lovell.

Moving on...

Zephyr, winner of four J/30 National Championships ('04, '03, '02, & '01), will be spotlighted this week on Sailing Anarchy. With the upcoming 2005 Nats down in New Orleans, this will hopefully give NOYC some heightened publicity. If Zephyr pulls out the win it will tie them with BeBop ('90, '89, '87, '86 & '85) for total Nats wins, but Zephyr will have them on consecutives.

Speaking of Zephyr, rumours abound that they will also be spotlighted in the September issue of Southwinds... which by the way has changed their web address to the much easier www.southwindsmagazine.com.

NOYC member, Anthony Hudson, is one of six qualifying Americans to be invited down to the 2005 Laser Worlds to be held Sept. 18-28th in Fortaleza, Brazil. NOYC.org will be running an interview with him starting Wed. He is trying to do some fundraising - so everyone give him a hand. He is currently ranked 291st in the world. Info on donations will be available soon on NOYC.org.

NOYC member, Ryan Finn is currently transiting Kip Stone's Open 50, Artforms, in preparation for the Nov. 5th Transat. He sails for Europe on Friday, but we got a good quote from him as he was preparing to leave...

Ryan Finn: "People in Maine are weird. They are all like "Hey, what's there to be bummed about? People are nice and things are wicked pleasant. Yippity, yaddley yey!" It is too much for me. They are just a bunch of hippies with good jobs and sensible cars. Anyway, I could never contribute any good gossip for your blog. The solo racing world is too obscure."

I don't know, that wasn't too bad Ryan...