Chris Otorowski, Commodore
Over 400 members and spouses converged on Newport, R.I., and took over the Newport Harbor Hotel and its marina last September. It was great fun, with some education and meetings sprinkled in every day.
It took a small army of volunteers to make the Centennial the success that it became.
Thanks to Brin and Joy Ford, Dennis and Verity Powers and Mindy Gunther for their solid efforts, along with their 20+ committee members, for pulling off the Fall Meeting portion of the week so splendidly.
Thanks to Karyn James and Steve James as Awards Chair, who put together a great program on heavy weather with past Blue Water Medal winners and other awardees.
I had a great event co-chair in Shawn Otorowski for the Centennial and there were many others who contributed time and energy to the event and their help was vital and much appreciated.
The final Centennial Program can be found here.
Opening cocktail party at Newport Harbor Hotel. All photos by Dan Nerney
Keynote Speaker Sir Robin Knox Johnston
A major highlight was having Sir Robin Knox Johnston as our Monday dinner keynote speaker.
Sir Robin Knox Johnson
Sir Robin enjoyed his part of the Centennial and wants to join us in our being planned Scotland Cruise in 2025. One amazing sailor. I met Sir Robin in Bermuda when the Bermuda Race was in progress. He was there because his ongoing event, the Round the World Clipper Race, was at its Bermuda stopover. I asked Sir Robin if he would come to our Centennial and be our keynote speaker. He agreed on the spot, to join us since our celebration fit just between two regattas he was involved in back in the UK. A wonderful addition to our celebration.
We welcomed several prominent commodores at the Centennial: James Neville of RORC; David Beattie of the Irish Cruising Club; Moya Cahill of Royal Newfoundland YC; Vice Commodore Tim
Trafford of the Royal Cruising Club; Paul Zabetakis Commodore and Clare
Harrington Rear Commodore of NYYC.
Thanks to Keith Yeoman of Yeoman Yachts for his sponsorship of this excellent dinner.
Heavy Weather Sailing Panel
Our heavy weather panelists of Steve Brown, Rich Wilson, Jean Luc Van Den Heede and Randall Reeves gave a great presentation on stage at the Jane Pickens Theater and the Rev Bob Shepton gave us a wonderful speech at lunch with accompanying slide show. Eric Forsyth sailed Fiona into the marina and joined us.
Heavy Weather Sailing panelists included (l to r) Randall Reeves, Jean-Luc Van Den Heed, Steve Brown, Frank Bohlen (moderator) and (not shown) Rich Wilson.
Sailing History Comes Alive
Historian Doug Adkins spoke on our history complete with sea chanties.
Pam Rorke Levy gave a great presentation about the sailing yacht Dorade (including having Dorade at the docks for touring).
Ed Kane and Marty Wallace brought their historic CCA yacht, Bolero, to the docks for touring (and rum punches).
Ships of the fleet dressed for visitors
Gary Jobson brings sailing to life
Gary Jobson, truly the voice of the sport of sailing in our time, volunteered and produced a 38 minute video entitled: “The Cruising Club of America: Sailing the World for 100 Years” and it can be viewed (and downloaded) here. Thanks to Gary for his exquisite capture of the CCA on film! And thanks to Rives Potts and Safe Harbor Marinas for becoming the presenting sponsor and making the film a reality that will probably be seen in 2122.
Thursday morning of Centennial week had seminars given by Will Welles and Austin Powers from North Sails; Chris Freeman VP at Mystic Seaport; Mark Grosby our Archives Chair; Sheila McCurdy on “CCA Characters over the Years”; Bill Strassberg on MOB and Safety Moments and Jay Gowell, Bill Cook, Jim Binch, Mark Ellis, Stan Honey, and Catherine Reppert holding a yacht design forum.
Reception at the Sailing Museum
Reception at the Sailing Museum
Gala Awards Dinner was a party for the ages!
Gala dinner under the big tent
Awardees who were unable to attend were very effectively present via live and recorded video on the big “video wall” under the tent. Awardees remotely honored included Matt Rutherford, Young Voyager Award; Peter and Ginger Niemann, Blue Water Medal; Curtis Green,
Rod Stephens Award; Sharry and Don Stabbert, Far Horizons; and Skip Novak, Royal Cruising Club Trophy. Present to receive their awards were Jack and Zdenka Griswold, Commodore’s Award; Gretchen Biemersderfer, Charles Vilas Literary Award; and Jim Chambers, Richard S. Nye Award.
Those presentations were followed by spirited dancing to the beat of the band “Decades by Dezyne.”
Traditional New England seafood bake
Sea shanties for entertainment
It takes a team
The entire week’s events were photographed (thanks to Dan Nerney) and video recorded. The plan is to edit the raw 13 hours of video into smaller segments that will be on YouTube. James Phyfe, as chair of the Communications Committee, is working with Roel Hoekstra and others to do some post Centennial promotion, posting of photos on our website and working on the video project. So, for those of you who could not be there, you will be able to capture some of the week as an armchair admiral, coffee, or wine in hand!
Michael Moradzadeh was a reliable constant in the run up and execution of the Centennial, handling all requested matters, both planned and last minute. We can all be very appreciative that Michael is our webmaster extraordinaire. Kathleen O’Donnell, our treasurer, was also called upon to handle refund requests from those whose plans changed at the last minute and to coordinate payments to our two dozen vendors. Thank you, Kathleen.
Thank you to all our sponsors
For the Centennial, the Board authorized searching for and securing supportive sponsors to help defray expenses. The effort netted over $27,000 in cash and donations of rosé wine and Gosling’s rum.
Sponsors included:
Newport Harbor Hotel and Marina
Offshore Passage Opportunities
Quinn Rose
