This was our first season racing Gadzooks, Flying Scot 5954 (Flying Scot Inc. 2011). She has been a fabulous boat to race in a One-Design Class that has history and hospitality beyond measure. Competitors throughout our racing experience have been exceptionally helpful, insightful, and transparent in how they have out-performed us. And we have tried to capitalize on their generosity by both reciprocating when folks need equipment or tools, and also sharing our videos to hopefully help others. (They have certainly helped us.)

We started the season barely able to handle the boat. Although we have been sailing since about 1970, we have not sailed together much. Further, we had only sailed Gadzooks 3 times before our first start together: once in 2022, and for 2 days of practice before the Buckeye Regatta first start. The Flying Scot Sailing Association has outstanding videos to help newbies learn how to handle the boat, how to start better, read the wind on the water, and tactically capitalize on competitor mistakes. We watched them — over and over — as well as our own videos and any regatta seminars to learn from our mistakes and how to “suck less” tomorrow. We hope you have found the videos entertaining, but also learned a thing or two from our mistakes over the season as well.

So, how’d we do overall? The table below summarizes our performance:

We started the season with three overall goals in mind: Sail well, get along, and keep improving. I would say, “Mission Accomplished!” These will remain our overall goals through 2024. We have benchmarked ourselves against some of the top sailors in the Class, and, as this photo shows, we’re right there with them (“The Kitchen Sink”, 6086):

Looking ahead, we plan to do the following regattas (Updated 11/29/23):
1/13-14/24: Florida District 4 Regatta, Davis Island, Tampa, FL
2/16-18/24: Florida District 5 Regatta & Flying Scot Midwinters, Eustis, FL
5/18-19/24: Buckeye Regatta, Westerville, OH
6/14-16/24: Egyptian Cup, Carlyle, IL
6/23-27/24: Flying Scot North American Championships, Cedar Point Yacht Club, Westport, CT
8/3-4/24: Ephraim, Ephraim, WI
9/7-8/24: Decatur Regatta, Decatur, IL (Match racing 9/9-12/24, too!) CANCELED
9/14-15/24: GLOW Regatta, Clinton Lake, Clinton, IL
10/5-6/24: Kentucky Bourbon Regatta (FKA: Sail-Fest), Kentucky Lake, Murray KY
All dates subject to change.

Finally, it would be unconscionable to end the season without giving credit to a host of family and friends who have been our biggest fan club on this journey. This list, by definition, cannot be complete, as more people have helped and cheered us on than we’ll ever know — as evidenced by the views we have gotten to our videos. But the people below deserve specific attention:
–Our wives, Janice Kunz (Kendall’s wife) and Dorothy Broaddus (Kevin’s wife) who tirelessly put up with our constant review of our performance on the boat and the multiple video edits.
–Janice, our wardrobe overseer. She has expanded now to even our practice days!
–Karen Cadle, our sister, who provides pet sitting whenever we all travel.
–Jay Cadle and Bob Anderson who provide specific equipment (car lift, bearing press, polishers) and craft expertise to improve the boat’s performance.
–Geoff Endris who sold the boat to Kevin.
–And of course Bruce Liljedahal, who passed away in 1992, but impressed his love for this sport into Kevin and Kendall. We hope to pass this along to you as well.

And here’s a final video to show that we also simply have fun sailing Gadzooks: going under the US-68 bridge over Kentucky Lake: