We had a good turnout of 20 members from newbies just about to build to our senior member Fred Wardwell who says he has been iceboating for 89 years starting as a small child. New member Ryan Haskell and his wife Heather are about to build, they have daughters 8 and 10 who may get sidecared or he may build an Opti. He is an IT person and has finished the new webcam for the launch site at Damariscotta Lake that will have a time lapse record of each day’s weather. He demo’d that on his smart phone, very cool. Thank you Ryan.

Treasurer’s report from Jim Gagnon (P.O. Box 463, West Boothbay, ME, 04575) ; $2700 in the bank, annual expenses around $1000 at the moment. Dues are due for 2017, send $20 to Jim.

The board of directors are unchanged and they have appointed the officers of the club, also unchanged.

President Buchholz reported on our first 100 mile race, not 50 miles out and back as the big boats used to do on the Hudson but 12 laps around an 8 mail course up on one of the Canadian lakes, we could do it in Maine. The biggest problem for the skippers was counting laps.

Buchholz also suggested we try an orienteering kind of treasure hunt on ice, details to be worked out. Perhaps each skipper would put out a clue. Each clue, to be found in order, would have instructions to the next one. After the clues were laid out I guess every body comes back to home, perhaps eats lunch, and then each goes to the one they planted and the through the numerical sequence and off they go in all directions until they have found them all. The hope is that any iceboat could enter and everyone would have a good time sailing all over the place both in the before lunch setting clues and the after lunch trying to find them. Each skipper would know the location of the clue he set out but not know where in the sequence of clues his known one is. There might be some entertaining element of confusion. Who writes the clues?

The pres. has been designing wind breaker CIBC jackets and caps for purchase by members, contact him for details “hilltop@midcoast.com”. He presented complimentary jackets to the Treas. and Sec. and Web designer John Stanton in acknowledgement of their loyal services. We will add the duty of models to our job descriptions. We appreciate the gesture, they are nice jackets.

Buchholz pointed out that our web site “iceboat.me” is the club archive. There was discussion of possible use of these records of where and when we have sailed over the recent years perhaps along with instructions or GPS coordinates to launch sites. Here is a worthwhile project that is season and weather independent. Any takers?

We usually grill something for the pot luck lunch after the meeting but we forgot to light the grill before the meeting. As usual there was plenty of good food to eat anyway.

The next turn out will be on the ice. The traditional first weekend of December on Plymouth Pond might be a week or two later due to the mild Fall. Maine is in drought since summer, several inches of rain have not been delivered and the lakes are at the lowest levels in 50 years. Beware of never before seen rocks.

Secretary Roberts