2025 Change of Command raftup 3/1/2025

How come we know so well how to have fun?

Anyone on Lake Boca on Friday would have seen the first club boat to arrive, Summer Wind dropped their anchor and ready to greet other club members. Eximius arrived around 1:30 and shortly, our Raft Master on Commotion. Judy & Jeff brought Affection to the lake. We were anchored a bit close to a couple of boats and would need to move if we wanted to raft up together, Affection anchored nearby intent of moving to the circle when it was formed Saturday. Lady Gray arrived and tied up alongside Summer Wind

We had snagged a pretty good area on the North east corner of the lake, plenty of room for the raft up, just need more boats so that it's a circle and not a line.  Commotion repositioned their boat, planting a huge stern anchor close to where the center of the circle would be, well, close.  More boats arrived, and raft-master, Ross, started to herd the boats. Several dropped both stern and bow anchors.

We moved Eximius to make room for one of the big cats - Chasing Blue - it took a while and we did a few laps around the North channel passing Alebrije several times, they seemed to have found a sweet spot and seemed to just hang our in the North East Corner of the lake.

Affection moved to set another corner. Eduardo helped his buddy set a stern anchor to point his boat along a radii of the circle ( couldn't resist ), Chasing blue took the NW corner and the boats started to fill in the blanks. Ross kept on herding.

Initially the news was that only about a dozen boats would join the circle, but we had 3 boats from a neighboring sailing and boating club and around mid day more of our club members arrived. Past Commodore Bob Schuldenfrei and Pat arrived and were hosted by incoming Commodore Barry aboard Lady Gray, Sharyn Leigh, Aries ( rear Commodore Bruce ), No Compromise, Cookie Monster, Alebrije II, Solitude all joined in. See the list of boats below.

To help move Affection nearer to the corner position, Ross took possession or our Bow anchor and dingy'd it over towards the South West of our bow on the end of 200' of rode. Then asked me to pull the line to drag Affection and Eximius in that direction. With some help of Ross & Carl, I was able to pull in about 50' of rode, it did move us quite a bit and that achieved the objective. We were now clearly in the SE corner of the raftup and left room for some of the other boats to raft up to the port side of Affection

Around 3-o-clock, Russ had jostled all the boats into a circle (ish) and it was story time. Pratically every boat, every skipper, every guest, all had stories to share, my favorite pass time. Of course we all got to show off our latest toys on the boat and no shortage of experience to assist in the various challenges about navigation, anchoring and many others.

Around 3pm, speaking with Hector it seemed that Barry wanted me to officiate the Ceremony. Happy to as I have done for several years. I confirmed with the flag officers that they had their flag ready and then navigated across the sterns of each boat back to Eximius.

Peggy had our Dink, Dine and Drift shareables ready. I put the oars in our dink 'Special T' and paddled out to the center of the circle - ok, that was my destination but the wind and current kept blowing me to the Northern edge.

Ross made a PSA about everyone staying until 11am Sunday so that we could break the raft without incident and hopefully not tangle all of the anchors.

The ceremony had it's usual delays, but we got it done. Our Commodore - Barry Simmons, Vice Commodore - Astrid Hunton and Rear Commodore - Bruce Guttler were installed, flags waving from the Spreaders and the Party began ( ok, 'continued', folks were already in the mood.)

After the ceremony, Hector & Lucy paraded the new Cruising Flag for 2025, it's a chart of our sailing area, should be online as soon as Hector send me the graphic ( hint Hector! )

The Drift was a huge success, it took a while for folks to get the dinks out, but the drift quickly formed with over a dozen boats, platters of food of all sorts was passed around. Like all HISC events, if there if food involved then there's too much! Nobody goes hungry at club events.

Some brought sodas, some Rum, Jamie brought shoe pastries, they found their way back to our dink several times, delicious. We thought that everyone would bring Hors d’Oeuvres, we brought water and chocolates. Both were gone by the time the music started.

The music went on long after the drift, a couple of the boats competing for the most popular songs. We still managed to share more stories.

Oh, while Ross & Carl were assisting with launching my anchor, Carl suggested that I re-route the rode so that it does not pass over the side of the anchor roller, I did, but wondered why? I spoke with Carl on Sunday and he told me of a situation where a skipper had secured the tack of their huge spinnaker to the bail across the anchor roller. The wind piped up and the roller detached from the hull and it flailed into the spinnaker, that's one heck of chunk of steel to have to try and tame.  Lesson learned!

In the evening as I moved around the boats, Terry advised me that one of his guests wanted to join and needed an application ( I'm the Membership Committee Chair ) so I went back to Eximius to get my tablet as membership application is done online. By the time I had gotten back towards Sharyn Leigh, the guest had take a swim and decided to head home, I'll catch him later. However, Jim Wallace had a crew member that also wanted to join. Keep an eye out for Suzanne.

Sunday some were up bright and early, some not so bright and not so early! The aroma of hot coffee wafted across the circle, some of it obviously stronger than the average joe.

Just about every boat was having the same conversation: How do we depart the circle. As Ross had announced before the Ceremony, 11am!  There was a clump of stern anchors in the middle of the circle. Several dinghies worked at pulling the anchors, some were quite stubborn. But Ross, Chris, Eduardo et.al. succeeded and the boats started to depart. Eximius was concerned about potentially rubbing the starboard side of Affection with our port stern quarter, so Jeff walked a huge fender down as we pulled forwards, moved by the wind and current. We easily cleared Affection and I was able to haul in the three strand nylon rode, secure the anchor chain to the bow cleat and then stow the three strand into the anchor locker.

We stayed at anchor for about an hour while I cleaned the transom and tidied the deck ready for the trip south. We had a light snack and pulled anchor at 12:30pm. Peggy helmed us around the North side of the lake then south towards Camino Real Bridge for the 12:40pm opening. We made the 1pm Hillsboro Blvd bridge opening, then the 1:45pm 14th street bridge and finally the 2pm Atlantic Blvd Bridge. We were back at the dock by 2:30pm - just two hours from raising anchor in Lake Boca.

We heard all of the boats that left after us and some before, as they called the bridges requesting passage, I think we all were surprised at the amount of Boat Traffic at that time of day.

It took us an hour and a half to unload Eximius and have a lunch break, back home by 4:30pm

What a great weekend! Thanks everyone that shared your time with us. Another Great HISC Event.