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Road To The Cup ­ Mother’s Day Edition

ByKim Pandapas

*Road To The Cup – Mother’s Day Edition*

*2015 Preview** -5/9/15*

You know you’re getting close when you start running into all if the
familiar faces. I’ve run into virtually half the fleet in the past two
weeks, and that was just at Crosby’s. Add in the fleet meeting, visits to
the hardware store, yacht clubs, West Marine and the impromptu driveway
visits while crawling around the boat, and it all adds up to the most
optimistic time of year. As my *Brother Jim Raisides* is fond of saying,
“I love opening day.”

So let me get straight to the point. The Nick Nichols Trophy, aka “The
Cup” is among our most coveted prizes. Don’t get me wrong, the Spittoon is
pretty coveted too, as are the assortment of MRA trophies, twilight
trophies and so on. But the Cup is different. You can’t win the Cup by
having a good day or a good series. The Cup is about sustaining a
competitive campaign over the entire season. If you want the Cup, you have
to sail just about every week and turn in consistently solid results. You
don’t necessarily have to win races, you just have to show up and be
competitive. As a reminder, Cup scoring includes Spring Series, all MRA
series, Race Week, Fall Series and Twilights, so everything except East
Coasts and Nationals. (Don’t ignore Twilights either because they are good
for 4-8 points a week.)

And while winning is great, only one of us gets to do that, and who knows,
this year it could be you. But the Cup isn’t just about the winner. This
rag lists the top-10 every week. You might consider a goal of making sure
your name makes that list. Or how about improving on last year’s rankings
by two positions? Everyone’s a winner – you just have to show up.

So I’m ready, as is your entire RTTC team. In case you’ve forgotten, it
takes a village to get these out every week, and the team is hard at work,
doing push-ups, running laps, lifting weights. The team includes the
scorer my *Brother Jim Raisides*, Twilight reporters *John Casler & Steve
Uhl*, the distribution department *Secretary Jeff Shoreman*, sideline
reporters, contributing photographers and of course, my
editor-in-chief *Christina
Pandapas*. They’re all here, they’re all jacked, and they’re all ready to
go. The machine is cranking up, belching out a little blue smoke but about
to rev and start purring like a kitten. Let the games begin.

Week 1 racing will include the two days of Spring Series on Saturday May 23
rd and Sunday May 24th. Happy Mother’s Day. -kp

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