FRENESI SHINES IN 2007
CHOWDER CUP RACE

By Nina M. Scott

The 28th Friendship Chowder Cup race, scheduled for Aug. 4 was postponed because of dense fog and a series of powerful thunderstorms. Aug. 5 was much the better day. Of the 37 boats registered, 32 finished. Instead of the prevailing southwest breezes, this time we had fluky northwest winds.
 
As usual, the A (over 28 feet) and B (18 to 28 feet) classes raced together over a longer course than the C class (up to 18 feet). The overall A&B winner was Frenesi, a 33-foot Contention sloop, sailed by Dick Semmes and Judy Ribeiro; 2nd and 3rd in the A class went to George Baker's 30-foot Pearson Summer Love and Dave and Doug Gleason's 37-foot Bostrom sloop Turtle.
 
Second overall and winner of the B class was Chris Duda, in his J/24 C-Monkey, closely followed by Chuck Thompson's Colgate 26 Triple Lindy and Tom Hammermeister's 24-foot Bridges Point Merlot. Last Boat In honors (recipient of the famous can of fish chowder) went to Dave and Nancy Johnson, whose 23-foot Sea Sprite White Seal did not have the best of days.
 
Chris Duda is a counselor at Camp Friendship on Crotch Island, a camp for inner-city kids from Brooklyn, N.Y. Five of the boys accompanied Chris, while six girls raced two boats in the C class, having had all of two days of practice.
 
The post-race dinner at the Martin Point Community House was another joyous affair, with good food and lively postmortems on the race. Judy and Bob Zeitiin, long the heart and soul of the Chowder Cup Association, were roundly applauded. Chris Duda brought the 11 campers who'd participated in the race, and all gathered with him to accept his winner's chowder cup.
 
Chris' neighbors, Suzanne and Bill Hallstein, aware of all that Chris and his family do for these kids, bought each of the campers a T-shirt. At $18 a shirt, that was a most generous gesture. When I spoke to Suzanne about it, she said, "There are some things you need to do in life. We'll just eat out a bit less this summer."