A few weeks ago I got a call from Jim Brown at work. He was calling to give me the good news that Empire life were coming on board as sponsor, contributing $2500 toward the campaign. Super good news! This past Friday I had a chance to meet with a few of the Empire Life executives and have a chance to chat with them about the project.

Empire Life is no stranger to corporate giving and supporting the Kingston community. They are just wrapping up a United Way fund raising campaign and separately support the Boys and Girls Club of Kingston among many other things. Empire is unique in Kingston, in that they are a national company with a big local headquarters here, not Toronto or Montreal. I really like that they are out in community and trying to help out. Kingston is definitely better for it.

Over the past month, I’ve been working with Kingston sail loft on making a new main and jib for the boat. These are super important sails that will be putting on some significant miles in the coming months. We want them to be fast, reliable, and easy to use.

Adjusting the sail plan on the mini is key and you must have the boat set up in such a way that you can adjust sail even when you are tired, it’s blowing 40 and the boat is bucking up and down below you. Making the sails easy to use saves energy and encourages me to make the sail charge early enough that it’s not too late. Andy and John put up with me constantly stopping in at the loft to see how things were progressing or to discuss whatever was coming next.

The Kingston Sail Loft have been so supportive of the campaign from the very beginning and I am very grateful of their donation of time and experience in working on the sails.

So last week the Canadian Yachting Association sent out an email to announce that they have organized a screening of the new Disney movie Morning Light. No less than 15 people forwarded that email to me, so there is no shortage of enthusiasm in the sailing communittee, that’s for sure

I am going to be taking to the kids from the Boy’s and Girl’s Club Leader’s in Training group to see the screening and I was hoping to get some financial help with tickets. Two of my team mates have already offered to donate $50 toward tickets. Is there anyone else out there that would like to help get the kids in to see the movie?

Drop me an email if you would like to help out with this.

So I was at a barn party a few weeks ago, and my buddy Steve Black, K7waterfront, was there and we got talking about blogging and news reports and he turned to me and Said: “You haven’t posted anything since July, that just not good enough”. He was totally right.

But I have a confession though…

When we got back from Bermuda, I took a little time to rest, and then started to look at the months that we had coming up and then looking at the rest of the campaign, we are now less than 12 months away from the start of 2009 MT. It is scary how much we have to get done.

Financial woes also cause me concern. We have barely been able to keep up with the expenses for the BOR, and now we have some repairs and things to change on the boat and cash is really tight. This, despite a crew of teammates that have been working their butts off for every donation and gift to the campaign.

So the long and the short of it is that it’s pretty tough to keep blogging with so much uncertainty and stress. While I would love to be reporting on fun sailing exploits, technical notes of interest and other fun stuff, the reality is that I am stressing about money and trying to juggle all the balls of applications, administration and proposals.

But the reason Steve was right, is because you want to hear about these trials and tribulations, you want to know where we are headed next and what we are up to with events, training and the other very meaningful partnerships that we have set up.

So while I am eager to share the cool stuff, I always hesitate to talk about the financial and administrative worries which consume me from day to day. But you know what? That’s just part of it all, so I’m going to give it to you straight.

More in a bit.

Hi All,

Greg and I got into Bermuda on Thursday afternoon and we are pretty much recovered from the race at this point. I’m sorry it has taken me this long to post anything, but sleeping, eating and working out a few things on the boat has taken precidence over the last few days.

I’m not quite ready to post the race report yet, but I wanted to post a couple of videos we took during the race. I hope to post a bit more latter today.

Here’s a little update from Greg. Just a note about record speeds… Right after we did this little update, we managed to get the boat up to 22.6 knots!

More in a bit

Today was a very busy day getting the boat ready for the start.

We had a bit of a scare as we were trying to fix a problem with the cigarette lighter on the boat that we use to charge all of the stuff that takes regular power. After opening up the electrical panel and fixing a lead that had come off, we started to test the system and we found that once we started the autopilot the whole system would shut down and we’d have no power anywhere. Poor Greg toiled belowed trying to fix the problem, while I went about ticking off things on our long list. Eventually we call a marine electrician that found we had a faulty lead on of the batteries. He also gave us a a general electrical “check-up” and cleaned up a few things for us. Everything works now and we are pretty confident that we have a good electrical system.

Around 1300, I registered the boat in the race. This is always such a stressful process, produceing documents and numbers for everything. We were pretty well prepared for this though.

The Captain’s meeting was at a local community hall and we got a very thorough overview of the logistics for both the start tomorrow and for our arrival in Bermuda. There is so much to think about and organize between customs arrangements, shipping schedules, call in schedules etc.

Tonight we finished packing the bins (navigation, kits, and food). You have to be so careful when you are packing all this stuff, making sure that you haven’t forgotten anything, and knowing exactly where everything is so we can find it in a hurry.

I’m looking forward to a good sleep, as tomorrow is going to be a very busy day.

On Monday this week the Boys and Girls Club of Kingston held a send off event for Greg and I and it really was a special event for me.

Hard to play the hardened sailor when you have such a cute group of kids send you off…

Here is a movie that George put up. Great stuff!

Here are the photos from Geoff Webster. Awesome as always!

This past Tuesday the sailng team re-christened the mighty 680 as “Boys and Girls Club of Canada”.

As many of you will know I have been working with a group of kids at the club over the past few months, and over that time I have really come to appreciate the good work that the club does for the community.

Earlier this month I had the idea to rename the boat for the kids at the club. Our hope is to help raise awareness and hopefully funds for their work in the community. Harold Parsons is the Executive Director of the Kingston B&GC and he suggested that the national office might be interested in taking on this project at the national level. After a flurry of emails, we finalized the deal.

We had a great launch event with lots of family, friends, as well as some of the kids from the club. Ben was good enough to make the offering to King Neptune, and I think we has an auspicious start to the season.

Sorry to update you with a press release…. More tomorrow.

The Minimus Sailing Team and Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada, are proud to announce the christening and naming of world class sailor Nathan Baron’s Open 6.5, on Tuesday May 13th at 4:00pm at Collin’s Bay Marina.

The Minimus Sailing Team has chosen to help promote the Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada by naming the boat after this important national child and youth serving organization. Skipper Nathan Baron remarks “This sailing project has been supported by the Kingston community, and we are very proud to be able to give something back to the community. The Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada does so much to support children and we are very excited to help promote the Clubs and their important programs both locally at the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Kingston and at Clubs across the country.”

“We are delighted to be a part of this exciting initiative,” said Pam Jolliffe, President and CEO, Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada. “It’s a wonderful opportunity to bring much-needed visibility to the positive impact that Clubs have on the lives of 200,000 young people in Canada annually and to generate new support for Club programs in the Kingston community and across the country.”

This summer the team will be sailing from Annapolis Maryland USA, racing in the Bermuda Ocean Race (BOR), a double handed (two-crew) race from Annapolis to Bermuda. This unique race is a mix of coastal navigation as well as testing offshore skills of top skippers on the North American East coast. Crew Greg van Rossem commented: “The BOR is a very tough race on its own, but as an element of Nathan’s training for the 2009 Mini Transat, this will be a very important event.”

The launch comes after a winter re-fit on the boat, making various improvements and refinements to the extreme yacht called an Open 6.5 or Mini. Boat Services Kingston have donated their time and expertise to help the Minimus Sailing Team get the boat into top shape for this season’s racing.

The christening of the boat will be open to the public at Collin’s Bay Marina at 4:00pm Tuesday May 13th. Children from the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Kingston will be on hand to help christen the boat. Please come down to support the sailing team as well as the Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada.

About Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada
Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada is a leading provider of programs to children and youth that support the healthy physical, educational and social development of 200,000 young people and their families each year. In 700 community locations across Canada, Clubs offer after-school programs in physical recreation, technology, the arts, personal growth and more. Many Clubs also provide meals, emergency shelter, family support programs and other supports to children, youth and families at risk. Boys and Girls Clubs have been helping young Canadians to discover, develop and achieve their potential, for over 100 years. To learn more, visit www.bgccan.com.

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