The Thursday night party was excellent. Folks who attended were understandably slow to leave, realizing that it was the last party of the 2012 season. It really has been a wonderful season.

I still think of Anita Howe and Elsie Plummer who, many years ago, initiated the Thursday evening get-togethers as a means of meeting our new members and thereby enhancing our club membership. It has worked well and I encourage all members to join your fellow members at these gatherings as a way to get better acquainted with some wonderful folks.

The potluck supper on Friday evening, our 2012 finale, was again a great affair with nostalgic overtones. Years ago, former members Bob and Gene Shepard introduced an old homemade family recipe of butterscotch sauce for the vanilla ice cream and the tradition continues.

We bade farewell to many friends who we won’t see again until next spring. Sandy and John Gillespie are the inspiration and organizers of these potluck dinners and have been for many years. We owe them a debt of gratitude.

Our fall work day on Saturday morning saw many willing volunteers bedding down our clubhouse for the winter. The old “many hands make light work” adage was in place and the job was finished before 10 a.m. Well done, gang!

In the late season of 1990, PC Jack Hanselman, a regular at the Men’s weekly lunch, convinced me that I should take on the responsibility of writing the Boothbay Harbor Yacht Club weekly column in the Boothbay Register, “just until the end of the season” said Jack. I gave up the pen to my old friend Ginny Conn 8 years later. Ginny was a professional writer and she did a super job for a couple of years. But then she too relinquished her Boothbay Harbor Yacht Club duties. I was again recruited by Boothbay Harbor Yacht Club friends to take on the reporting duties for the club. I agreed after a few hours in the torture chamber, and I have been at it since. I jest, of course. It has been an honor and a privilege to serve our club for close to 20 years and I’m thankful for the many compliments I have received during my tenure.

As many of you know, I have been through some trauma over the past few years both with me and with Natalie. When I return next spring, after being cosseted by my two daughters over the winter months, I will be celebrating my 90th birthday. There are, within our membership, talented and younger people who have writing ability and the desire to take up the mighty pen and continue this work. Please make yourselves known to our leaders; you will be the better for it and I speak from experience.