Our annual Dana Dillon New Year’s Day Race (also known as New Year's Madness) was be held in conjunction with Hampton Yacht Club on New Year's Day (of course). That race started at HYC and finished outside Old Point Comfort Marina. HYC put on a great pre-race brunch. The race was sailed in near perfect weather (66 degrees, 10-15 knots of wind. It was a tough beat out of hampton creek followed by a long close hauled leg down around the bar and a great spinaker run back to Ft. Monroe. Afterwards we all gathered at the OPCYC clubhouse for libations, chili and the race awards.

PMU is devoting a good part of the spring 2012 schedule to the topic of "Racing for Cruisers". This is for folks who have always wondered what it would be like to race a sailboat, but for one reason or another just never did it. And it's especially intended for those who have absolutely no intention of stripping their boat and buying plastic sails. It's for people with multiple heavy anchors and hundreds of feet of chain, two or three-zone air conditioning, radar, watermakers, a full set of china and two boxes of books aboard.

While many of us are NOT geeks, there are plenty around the docks who are touting the utility of having an iPad or iPhone aboard their boats for a variety of reasons. In this session, we will clear the air on what kind of device and what kind of connectivity will provide what outputs, or plainly, what do we need to do what? We will demonstrate some of the navigation, weather information, reference material, and entertainment applications on an iPad with exactly the same connectivity that you would have aboard your boat. Many think this is where technology is taking us.

PMU - 28 Jan 12