The SHYC Sailing Foundation has agreed to purchase properties in Stonington Borough, CT from the Mohegan Tribe. The Foundation has been leasing the complex, comprising three buildings and docks next to Skipper’s Dock Restaurant, for the past two years as the center for its community sailing and marine biology programs. The transaction will close on or before December 31, 2010.

Brewer Pilots Point Marina in Westbrook, CT has completed the installation of an 8,500 square foot solar photovoltaic (PV) system funded, in part, by a grant from the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund (CCEF). The electricity generated by the new system will supply power to three marina work sheds and a portion of its 900 customer slips.

The Hempstead Harbour Club, located on Long Island Sound, is celebrating receiving “Landmark Status” from the City of Glen Cove, NY on Saturday, September 4. The club was recognized as an “historical location of significance” which has maintained a unique “Corinthian” style culture since its foundation in 1891.

Forty-one boats from 22 to 46 feet competed in the 7th Annual Regatta for Lake Champlain presented by Rock Point Advisors on Saturday, July 24. The first boat to complete the 13-mile course was Jan Rozendall’s Buzzards Bay 30 Mashnee (South Burlington, VT; pictured), with a youth crew from the Lake Champlain Community Sailing Center.

Mashnee was designed Nathanael Greene Herreshoff and built by the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company of Bristol, RI in 1902. In poor condition when Rozendall acquired her in 2004, the 46-footer underwent a comprehensive three-year restoration at Darling’s Boatworks in Charlotte, VT.

On Saturday, August 7, Milford Yacht Club in Milford, CT hosted the MYC Invitational-Boardman Cup Challenge in conjunction with the Eastern Connecticut Sailing Association. Milford Yacht Club has hosted this premier regatta for nearly four decades, and this year the club teamed up with The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) and Gary Jobson, who has served as the Leukemia Cup Regatta’s National Chairman for the past 14 years.

The U.S. Coast Guard has awarded US SAILING a significant one-year Drivers Education for Boaters™ grant in support of US SAILING’s Small Powerboat Handling program. These funds will be used to increase retention and acceptance of safe boating practices, expand on-the-water training capacity, ensure sustainable powerboat training facilities, reduce accidents, and create effective marketing and branding tools.

Building on the success of last year’s Rally with 31 boats, Organizer Offshore Passage Opportunities (OPO) is once again waiving the entry fee* for the North American Rally to the Caribbean (NARC). The Rally departs October 31, 2010 from Newport, RI (or best weather window after that date).

Derecktor Shipyards has launched the 281 foot motor yacht Cakewalk, the largest yacht (by volume) ever built in the United States. When the six deck, 2,998 gross ton vessel floated off Derecktor’s new 4,000 ton dry-dock into the waters of Bridgeport, CT harbor, it was the culmination of an effort never before seen in American yacht building. Several years and thousands of skilled labor hours, along with work from the owners’ team and Derecktors’ project group were needed to make the original vision a reality.