Club news

Tim Grady, of Titusville, died on Tuesday, May 19, 2026, aged 84. The Lightning fleet — and the classic wooden Lightning fleet in particular — lost one of its long-standing members.

Tim built his own wooden Lightning, Peregrine, #15477: a light blue boat with a peregrine falcon on the spinnaker, set up to daysail comfortably and still race. It is the most recent home build to be granted an official measurement certificate by the Lightning chief measurer. He sailed her on Lake Monroe, was always ready to help at the club, and his rigging diagrams are still passed around as a guide to setting a boat up. When his health no longer allowed him to sail her, he asked the class office to help find Peregrine a good home; she is now looked after by the Keuka Lake fleet in the Finger Lakes.

Born in Powell, Wyoming, Tim grew up in Billings and then San Francisco, served four years in the US Navy, took his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at UCF and his PhD at the University of Texas at Austin, and spent his career at Texas Instruments as a technical trainer. He is survived by his wife Patricia, his sister Carol, his children Chuck, Ken, Monica and Bobby, and seven grandchildren. In keeping with his wishes, no services were held.

Bob Astrove and Laura Jeffers both wrote tributes for the club, remembering a skilled craftsman, a good friend across a dozen regattas, and that ear-to-ear smile. Tim documented his projects well, and much of that work is still online.

Joe Waters, of Lexington, South Carolina, died on May 15, 2026, aged 71. He was born in Charleston on November 13, 1954, started sailing at seven, and never stopped: more than sixty years on the water, in Y-Flyers, Catalina 22s, Capri 22s, San Juan 21s and J/24s, and for The Citadel.

He began his working life at Helms Yachts and opened WatersSails in 1985. In 1996 he coached the Russian Olympic team to a second place — their first Olympic sailing medal. He made fast sails, and he gave away what he knew about sailing freely; people remember the enthusiasm more than the silverware.

Joe met Linda at the Turkey Shoot Hospice Regatta on Chesapeake Bay and married her at the same regatta in 2010. He is survived by Linda, his stepdaughter Caitlin, his stepson Jonathan, his sister Cindy, and the Jack Russells. Memorials may be made to Raintree Jacks Jack Russell Rescue in his honour.

The forecast was either brutal or fantastic depending on your nature: 15 to 24 knots from the southwest, gusting into the thirties, which is the fastest possible direction for a 38-mile course that runs north to northeast. A front was due with lightning and temperatures in the fifties. Registration was the lightest in years and the race committee issued strong warnings. Of 52 boats entered, 38 started.

Saturday morning delivered the exact opposite: very light southwest and east air for five hours, by which point a few optimists had hoped to be finished. The thunder arrived first, then the heavy air at about 1:30, and it stayed for three hours or so — hull speed, reefs in for those who could, a shoreline to hide behind for those who could not. The wind clocked from southwest to north and the last stretch was close-hauled the whole way. Ed Sims from Ocala, Rich and Andy sailed the last hours within sight of each other through rain and mist and finished around five, within half a mile.

LMSA sent Wicklow Way with Rich, Andiamo with John and Show Me with Andy; Scott M., Gabe, Louis and Max filled the crew spots. Rich and Andy took firsts in class and John a second, and Rich took the Markland Trophy for first cruiser on corrected time. 27 boats finished with no serious injury or damage, bar an A-cat that turtled and dismasted and was towed in. Mugs were christened in Crescent City on the way home. More LMSA boats next year.

Alan drove Blue, his 33-foot Farrier trimaran, up to Chicago, rigged her and flew home to work. Jim and Andy met the boat the day before the race; Alan joined on the Friday night. 285 boats, 24 classes, 2,500 sailors, starts ten minutes apart across a four-hour window.

They started on time after a rainy pre-race, with four hours of easy spinnaker jibes on a southerly. Then a wind hole, in which nearly the whole fleet stopped and they stowed the chute waiting for a promised northerly shift — never stow the chute. The shift took hours, and they lost twelve miles to their nemesis almost immediately. What followed was roughly forty hours of beating north into headwinds and four-foot rollers fetched up the length of the lake: multihulls do not care for either. They knew they were last, and kept working.

The chance came at sunset on the last evening, when the water flattened and the wind swung southeast. They set up the double slot — two headsails trimmed in unison, a configuration they had only played with earlier that day — and went from 6 to 16 knots, passing twenty or thirty monohulls in about ten miles. Alan then drove perfect telltales for twelve miles to clear the Mackinac Bridge without tacking, beating a freighter to it, and they bore away for a pitch-black finish line at 1:15 am, about 58 hours in. They had no idea where they stood until someone ran up the dock to tell them they had gone from last to second, passing both their closest rivals at the end. Second in class and third in the multihull fleet — two trophy flags back to Lake Monroe.

February’s spotlight at Commodore JW’s coffee session was Bill Holstein. First sail: a Prindle 16 catamaran in 1983. US Coast Guard merchant marine officer in 1985, ASA keelboat instructor from 2010, and the SORC Miami to Cuba race in 2017. “Sailing is always a great escape.”

February 16–18, and close standings all weekend. A northeasterly kicked up a real sea state on the second day: physically demanding upwind legs, exhilarating downwind sailing, and an 18-mile long-distance race to finish the job.

Team LMSA sailed Hot Stuff — Rich Gailey, Gabriel Caldwell, Andy Forrest, Max Perez, Derek McColl, Maximilian Neidhardt and Jim White — and Craic’n, with Larry Harrington, Nancy Harrington, Allister James, Jose Acunna and Olivier Fleury. Congratulations to Steve Hayden and Angie Rimes Hayden on Sharkrider for winning their race.

A good regatta on and off the water. Worth putting on the schedule, and worth arriving ready for the rum.

September 30, and the 12-mile race around Bear Island on Crescent Lake was back after several years off. The forecast was not encouraging — Mike Loughlin was reading frontal boundaries and expecting the worst — and the rain put off all but the optimists at Crescent City Yacht Club. The start was postponed an hour to find a gap between rain lines and went a little after noon in 2.5 knots from the north. Four boats sailed. The wind shifted all day from northwest to northeast and built to 12.5 knots, and no rain fell on them at all.

John Chamberlin and Alan Moore on John’s new Nacra 5.8 were the show stoppers, taking line honours and the overall trophy — a golden goat skull on a wooden plaque — by about 27 minutes. Gene Cochran on the Catalina 22 Game Over sailed the wrong course and lost a good chance at the displacement prize; Show Me, with Mike and Commodore Jim aboard, took it instead. Ed Sims from Ocala pushed them to the very end, as usual. It turns out that reading the sailing instructions and going to the skippers’ meeting are both worth the trouble. A 1–2 for LMSA, and hospitality at 3 Bananas afterwards.

Craic’n sailed with Nancy, Larry, Jose, Allister and Andy. Nine boats started at 6 pm at the New Smyrna Beach sea buoy in 10 to 12 knots of east wind, ran past the Main Street Pier at Daytona and finished at the St Augustine inlet — roughly 55 miles, scored as two races, the sprint to the pier and then the long haul north.

Recent hurricanes had left steady five-foot rollers out of the east-northeast, with bigger ones mixed in. The point of sail barely changed in nine and a half hours: a deep beam reach for the sprint, then a close reach the rest of the way, with the breeze up to about 20 after sunset. No tacks, no jibes — a long drag race, in which the bigger boats pulled away on hull speed and the hope was that the rating would hold up. A run-in with the channel bottom on the way out left the rudder kicking up, so there were some tense moments hove to with Larry hanging off the transom to get it down again, and the rail crew took a dousing every time a roller met the hull. The full moon broke through late and made it beautiful. Finding the sea buoy at the finish took some doing — shore lights everywhere and a GPS mark that moves with the sand — and they recorded 3:25 am.

The sail down the inlet afterwards was the most exciting part of the weekend: main only, dead downwind, ten-foot following seas, a few startling jibes in the troughs and a near broach to wake everybody up. Larry brought them through and they docked about 5 am. Third in the sprint and fifth in the long race, performance class. Nancy and Larry had prepared the boat properly for a night race — jack lines, harnessed PFDs with strobes, whistles and tethers, a Lifesling and an EPIRB aboard — which is why the crew felt secure the whole way.

Larry and I stayed on to the Sunday for the Meehan Cup, with my sister Marianne and her husband Matt as guest crew — our regular crew had gone home for a well-earned rest. Conditions out the inlet were still rough, so the race was held on the river: windward-leeward, four laps for the performance class, shifty 10–15 and a beautiful day. Tired as we were after Friday night, we finished second behind Rockstar, a local SAYC boat.

Thanks to Allister, Jose and Andy, who put up with a long wet night in the Starlight, and to Marianne and Matt for taking on the Meehan Cup as novices.

LMSA brought two national championships home from Buzzards Bay: the high PHRF class and the combined high and low PHRF overall. Team LMSA sailed Alan Moore’s Knot Yet, with Alan on the helm, Andy Forrest in the pit and Jim Goempel on the bow.

Friday opened with a 22-mile distance race in 10 to 12 knots, one start for everybody even though the fleets scored separately — 13 boats in the high class and 9 in the fast class. That race turned out to be the pivotal one: two and a half hours of beating to the first mark gave them close crosses and lee-bow situations against every expected rival, and told them they had a small edge upwind and in pointing. They finished well clear of their fleet with only two of the fast boats ahead.

Saturday brought three buoy races in 20 to 25 knots. Most of the fleet reefed; they carried full sail rather than give up downwind speed, and saw 19 knots. They lost the first by seconds to Triumph, a well-regarded Rochester crew, and won the second by nearly a leg. In the third, with a comfortable lead, the kite blew four feet down, went under the boat and fouled both centreboard and rudder. Twenty minutes of cutting sheets and stabbing the sail to clear the water out of it left them with a ninth. Alan had a spare, and the next race activated a throwout, which still left them a point ahead after Triumph’s main halyard failed.

Sunday was the opposite — light, shifty, a strong current — and they collected every error into one race, finishing sixth while the two boats behind them finished first and second. That dropped them to third with the breeze dying below the five knots needed to race and forty minutes left in the window. The wind came back, the committee got race six away, and Jim pulled a great start: they ducked two boats with twenty seconds to go and came up to the line with clean air and speed. Triumph was a length to windward and abeam. Alan kept the bow down, the boat came up in front, the lee-bow forced Triumph to tack away, and they rounded three lengths ahead. Looking back from the run, Triumph had her kite stuck in the spreader. Boat preparation won it as much as anything: board, rudder and sails all in meticulous condition.