The Oregon Offshore skippers meeting, party and raffle held at the Rogue Brewpub went off quite well on Wednesday night. The skippers meeting was a great meeting, lots of attention and many many thanks to Bruce Hedrick who did a wonderful weather, conditions and tactical briefing that was appreciated by all. Bruce is a great guy, very knowledgeable and, based on what is happening as I write this on the Race Tracker, called the conditions pretty well- more later on that!.
We had a bit of a crisis this year because the trolley that we have used in the past to ferry folks from the marina to the party was not available. We worked hard to find a suitable replacement but, up to last week, no solution was found. Then, at the last minute when we were contemplating carrying folks to the party on small beasts of burden, the Astoria School District came through and let us use one of their big yellow buses. It worked great and everyone seemed happy to relive their youth for a bit.
The traditional raffle went off well this year and we had some great items. Columbia Sportswear came through with a couple of very expensive jackets, The Sailing Foundation generously donated some text books and a discounted rate on a SAS seminar next year. Sail Flow donated some memberships to their site. The big prizes were a huge roller cooler by Yeti- we are told it is their first roller, in addition to some smaller coolers. The biggest issue was to make sure that a big enough boat won it!!. An anonymous donor gave a large print of this years T-Shirt logo that was signed by the skippers of every boat in the race. Jeff Mcdonald won the print and Jeff and Jenn decided to donate it to Kevin Flanagan, the owner of Schooner Creek Boatworks, our title sponsor. I am told Kevin loved it and I hope it shows up on the wall at SCBW.
Here is a pic
