Sailing "BLOOPERS!!!"

For over 20 years the Minney family owned and operated Josh Slocum's, a bay front restaurant located in the west end of lovely Newport harbor.  It was a summer tradition for the Minney family to host the tuesday night "Wooden Boat" races. For many years we would only allow wooden boats and then opened the race up to what we called "Classic Glass" and finally, anyone that wanted to come out and play was welcome.  To lure customers into the restaurant after the races I started taking videos of the race and then showing them at the bar as soon as the last boat finished.  The racers loved the videos and we had tons of fun with them.  I have over 100 of the VHS tapes and although I took no special care of them the seem to be holding up well.  Getting from VHS to DVD to a computer to editing has been a bit of a challenge but I'm learning a lot and having fun in the process.  It's a bit sad though.  Many of the skippers of some of those fantastic wooden boats have passed on.  Burke Sawyer and his elegant varnished meter boat from Norway, Jack Bailey whom almost never missed a race in 15 years and his beautiful 12 meter Newsboy (formerly Westerly, an America's cup contender) Chuck Avery and his slippery Fife 8 meter Sunnovie (mispelled) and most recently my brother Owen who raced dozens of different boats and ran the camera boat numerous times.  P.S. The gal that played "sling shot" with the jib sheet on Night Wind didn't get hurt.  I didn't even know I captured her little trick until we watched the videos at the Slocum bar.  Best wishes for the holidays.  Ernie Minney and the crew at Minneys...