On behalf of the Sailing Committee, we wish all of Team SLMASC a very Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy and successful year ahead.

For those who are or will be travelling to National titles and major regatta’s or races over the next few weeks, we wish you a safe journey and know that you will represent yourself and the club well. Best of luck and please keep us informed of your results and any other interesting tales so that we can share these with other club members (please email to webmaster@slmasc.org).

For those who are not going away and are interested in racing over the Christmas – New Year period, the club is holding 2 ‘Sweepstake’ (Non-Point Score) yacht races on Friday 27th December and Friday 3rd January to allow crews to keep sailing if they wish without disadvantaging those who are away in the point score. These two weeks ‘Sweepstake’ races will operate as normal Handicap races (with Divisions 1 & 2) with prizes but no points being awarded to the winners. Handicaps will be adjusted between the two races however when Point Score racing resumes on Friday 10th January, handicaps will then revert to the pre-Sweepstake Handicaps.

As these are non-point score races, there was a suggestion (request) made at last Fridays BBQ by some of the ‘over hyped’ etchell boys that yachts be allowed to fly spinnakers in these 2 Sweepstake races ….. as if they don’t cause enough havoc already!! 😉 As the Twilight handicaps do not make allowance for using spinnakers this would be unfair to boats sailing non-spinnaker ….. so for these 2 Sweepstake races only, in addition to the 2 normal Non-Spinnaker Twilight Divisions, any boats wanting to sail with a spinnaker can start in a SEPARATE ‘Spinnaker Division’ that will have a SCRATCH start on the fall of the number 15. The winner for the Spinnaker Division will be decided by first past the post (no TCF handicaps to be applied ….. just for fun racing with bragging rights to the winner!) and this division will have no impact on the results for the normal Div 1 & 2 races.

We look forward to seeing some of you in the Sweepstake races over the next 2 weeks, but if you are going away, please travel safely and we look forward to seeing you back on the water when Twilight Point Score racing  resumes from Friday 10th January 2014.

Enjoy your break and Smooth Sailing for 2014!!

Team SLMASC