It's always a sad day when ORION is hauled out for the season, and this past Sunday was no different. It's been a long time since I've actually had a chance to go sailing, and it showed - her deck was covered in bits of crab, shells, and bird droppings. Not a good sight! Furthermore, her bottom was pretty after so many weeks of neglect. After clearing her deck as much as I could, I brought ORION into shore where I unstepped the mast and unloaded some of her equipment. After that, I brought her to the Waterford launch ramp where my father was waiting with my car and trailer, and we hauled her out. A power washer made easy work of the growth on the bottom and it helped to clean the deck; soon she'll be trailered closer to home where she'll spend the winter in a garage. I like to think of this not as the end of the 2016 sailing season, but the start of the 2017 sailing season!
Fall, 2016 Notice to Mariners Published
The Mariner Class Association just published its fall, 2016 edition of their newsletter, Notice to Mariners. Head on over to their website to get a copy. It's 16 pages of Mariner goodness! (You do have to be a member, but it's only $15 a year and well worth it!)
Nationals Date Set
The Mariner National Championship Regatta has been scheduled for September 15-17, 2017, at Riverton Yacht Club in New Jersey. Much more information is to come!
Another Mariner Rescued
I received a nice e-mail from Scott Murrell who recently acquired Mariner #2321. He writes, "I'll be keeping her at our dock on Back Creek, off of the Assawoman Bay outside of Ocean City, Md. I had a Mariner before that was similar to yours, with the forward hatch and without the cabin mast support my newly acquired one has. Sold it about 8 years ago and forgot how much fun it was until I went sailing 2 weeks ago with another couple. Found this boat last week with a hole in the transom, but with 2 year old sails, good trailer and very complete. Because of the damage, they gave me the entire rig for free; I just had to drive the 200 miles each way to get it!"
Mariner Ads Finally Finished
There are now over 30 ads, flyers, brochures, and catalogs uploaded to the site which all feature the Mariner from when it was first in production (1963) to the 2013 50th Anniversary Rendezvous. It was a lot of work, but it's great to finally have them all available again. Enjoy!
Sailing Pictures Finished
All the pictures of ORION sailing through the years have finally been uploaded. I wasn't able to recover some of the pictures from the old site, but I got almost all of them! My next project is to upload all the O'Day Mariner advertisements.
Pictures of the Week Finished
I finally uploaded all the past "Picture of the Week" photos posted since my website started in 2008. That comes to 379 unique pictures - with captions! It also gave me a chance to make some updates and fix some captions that needed editing. The next project is to upload all the past pictures of ORION sailing.
Picasa to Google
I'm working on transferring all my photo albums from Picasa to Google Photos, which isn't quite as bad as an undertaking as I thought. However, there are many links that need to be sorted out. Stay tuned for for info on that.
Used Parts Section at Stuart Marine
Looking to get used parts cheap? Stuart Marine has a new section on their website selling used parts, and it's fairly extensive and with prices surprising low. It's worth a look - check it out here.
New Executive Board
There are some new faces on the Mariner Class Association's Executive Board! Eric Lesniak, previous VP Communications, is now President; Joyce Bartlett has stepped up to fill his slot. Also, Dan Meaney replaces outgoing VP Membership Tim Reiche, and Brad Friedman replaces Treasurer and Secretary Bill D'Autrechy. Chris Duncan, Bill Eggers and I are continuing as Measurer, Newsletter Editor, and Webmaster respectively.
Just started
Well, I'm just starting a new webpage. Let's see how it turns out! It's a radical departure from the old site I have run since 2009 using Microsoft Frontpage.