[Angler Paul]

All,

I agree that our tournament should have a bad weather date and will push our board to approve one for next year. My decision not to fish the tournament had nothing to do with safety. I have a 30' Grady and 35 plus years of experience. I fish close to 200 days a year and can handle just about anything the seas can throw at me. I respect the ocean and never exceed my boat's capablilty or my own skill. I have fished in far worse conditions than yesterday but I am older now and have a bad back. I chose not to fish because I did not feel like taking a pounding which would aggravate my back. I am also fortunate enough to be retired and therefore I can fish just about any day.
That being said I certainly am concerned about the saftey and enjoyment of others who participate in the tournament. That is why I would like to have an alternate date. The fact that we have not had one in the past is not do to greed as someone said. There would not be refunds if an alternate date was listed in the rules and we would end up with far more entrants if the weather was nicer on the alternate date. As I said previously many people including me waited until the last minute and then decided not to join because of the weather forecast. The fact of the matter is that we lost a lot of much needed funding because of the weather. IMO an alternate date would be better for our entrants and JCAA as well.
The biggest problem in scheduling an alternate date is the booking of a location for the awards ceremony. An alternate date for the ceremony would not fly with a big casino in AC where we have held most of our awards ceremonies and it is unlikely that it would be acceptable to other large facilities such as the Holiday Inn in Manahawkin where we are having this year's ceremony.
I intend to show what others have posted on this thread to the JCAA board and I am looking for a little help here. Please let me know what you think. I don't think that the vast majority of people would want to go to a drawing so we are going to hold the tournament. My suggestion for next year would be to hold the tournament on 8/1 with a bad weather date of either 8/2 or 8/8. The problem with having the bad weather date the very next day is that we often have bad weather two or more days in a row. Having it a week later might interfere with other tournaments being run on the same day at any or some of our 9 or 10 weigh-in stations. The other problem is the ceremony. An idea I have is to hold the ceremony a couple days after the alternate date even if we hold the tounament on our originally scheduled date. For instance next year the tournament might be held on 8/1 with an alternate date of 8/8 but the ceremony would not be held until 8/12 regardless. Would that be acceptable to our entrants? Again, any input is appreciated.

Paul Haertel