Bennett, Weakley and Schonborn enjoy great weekend among the Rebels at Clark Lake!

This year's Clark Lake Fall Regatta was once more a marvellous event enjoyed by healthy fleets of Rebels (10), Interlakes (13) and Sunfish (11, inluding former? World champion, Derrick Fries!) plus one each of Lasers, Wayfarers and Mutineers. As has been the case in recent years, the weather was surprisingly warm. So too, was the hospitality - as always. And the food, as always, was great - many thanks to Cheryl Hockenberry and her team of chefs! No surprise there! Neil Robb and Dan Hockenberry made fine debuts as race officers, and produced enjoyable, exciting races from the usual challenging array of shifty winds.


Noteworthy is the fact that Neil and Dan cooked up a course: 5-1-2 (see chart above) that has never been tried before on Clark Lake, a course that let us sail two Sunday races in southerly winds in the west end of the lake while the east end was virtually becalmed! Well done, guys!

In the 10-boat Rebel fleet, Al and Marc (above right) were really tuned in to Clark Lake's vagaries on this weekend and scored a pretty spectacular 1-1-2-1-1 to upset 2005 Rebel National champion, Dave Nickels (above centre) and 2005 Junior National champion, Jim Quiniff who placed 2nd and 3rd respectively. (In the photo above from the final race, those in the know will note that Marc is making his debut as a Rebel helm here. Dave has just started the final beat while Marc and Al are about to round and give chase. Marc snagged a late shift even in this race to complete a most successful series with another win.)


As they say, it's an ill wind that blows no one good: The sailingwise sidelined Dan Hockenberry entrusted his cherished, perfectly rigged and laid-out Rebel 4180 to Marc and Al (above left) who made the most of their opportunity. Winds of 5 to 10 knots on Saturday and 3 to 5 knots on Sunday were tailor made to Al's talents as things went slowly enough that he and Marc could look around, discuss and then execute (most of the time!). In the end, it was one of those weekends where educated guesses came through for the winners a startling number of times. Of course, Uncle Al has sailed at Clark Lake pretty well every year since 1988, and now feels about as at home in these shifty conditions as it's possible to feel!!


Runner-up, Dave Nickels (above left), was sailing with a pick-up crew - Larry Schmida's son, Todd - who performed well as this new team scored 2-3-3-4-2 in this no-drop series. Dave, the Rebel builder in Fenton, Michigan, observed after the series, that he must have used up all his luck in July's Nationals at the Portage Lake YC, where he was really picking the shifts and finding the best wind amazingly well. Poor Dave has spent pretty much his entire sailing summer in frustrating "garbage winds", unlike Uncle Al and Marc whose last three regattas have taken them into nice, healthy and relatively steady breezes on Tawas Bay and Lake Ontario during the past month.


Chicago's Junior team of Jim Quiniff (above left) and Theresa Stoodley sailed a fine 4-4-1-5-3 series to nail down series 3rd while Jim's proud parents, Mark and Peggy, who were runners-up in this year's Nationals, looked on as part of the Race Committee. Congratulations to Jim and Theresa on a beautifully sailed series! Of note is the fact that Jim and Theresa passed Uncle Al near the finish of race 3, held their lead with the poise of veterans,  and became the only ones to beat Al and Marc.


4th place went to Clark Lake's champion Buccaneer sailor, Larry Schmida (above left) and his new bride, Patti, who moved their borrowed Rebel #4191 to new heights, and who looked especially good with their 2nd in the light airs of race 2 where they finished over half a leg ahead of 3rd.


Impressive sailing for Toronto's John Weakley (above left) who had not helmed a dinghy since Hector was a pup and had never steered a Rebel. One of Canada's premier Race Officers, John (who did a superb job running the 2004 Wayfarer Worlds) took enough time from his race management discussions with Neil Robb to borrow the latter's fine Rebel and son, Eric (above right), to take series 5th.

The "everyone's a critic" dept: As my crew remarked: "The exercise will do John good - all he does most weekends is sit around on his RC boat which even has an electric anchor winch!" Crew, Eric, noted that John's accent created some communications difficulties early in the first race when John urged: "Jibboot! Jibboot!", and it took Eric a moment or two to translate this into: "Jib out!"


Visiting from Coldwater, site of the 2006 Nationals, John Hudak (above left) and Larry Christiansen obviously preferred Sunday's light southerlies to the previous day's easterlies. Having ended Saturday in 9th place, John and Larry scored a fine 3-4 on the Sunday to move all the way up to 6th overall in a well matched fleet.


Also doing better in the Sunday racing was the Clark Lake father-daughter duo of Jeff Hoover (above left) with Brittany (almost 12 years old! Birthday on Monday, the 26th). Race 4 saw Jeff and Brittany score an impressive 2nd to briefly move past John Hudak into series 6th, but a 7th in the finale dropped them into 7th place overall. Also worth mentioning was Jeff's race 2 start where he port-tacked the fleet (see photos below) and led the fleet for half of the first beat. Of course, the problem with being first is that when you get a bad break or two and lose the lead, you tend to get proportionally more upset and let it affect your sailing. In this race, Jeff ended up falling all the way to 9th despite his terrific start.




Newly elected Rebel Class Commodore, Ron Reading (above right), was browbeaten by his grand-daughter and crew, Catie Simmons, into coming to race all the way from Chicago. In making their début as a racing team, Ron and Catie placed a respectable 8th, and more important, had fun!


Easily our oldest Rebel team was Woody Woodruff with Dorothy Rose (above left) - total age 150+, I believe - who ended up just a single point behind Ron and Catie. Woody reminded me of (a quieter!) George Blanchard as he bemoaned the fact that there simply wasn't anywhere near enough wind for him to reach his comfort zone!


Frequently in the thick of things but lacking the finishing touch in this series were Brian Main (above right) and Mike Wolf who ended up in series 10th. They had their boat moving well but when the chips were down, couldn't - as Larry the Cable Guy would say - "get 'er done!" Yet!!!! Next year! Right, guys??!!