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Great winds, close
competition highlight 2004 Canadian
Nationals at TS&CC
The 2004
Canadian
Wayfarer Nationals were hosted by the
Toronto Sailing & Canoe Club June 26-27 on Lake
Ontario's
Humber Bay.
While the air and
water
temperatures were on the cool side, there was lots
of exciting breeze.
A fine
race committee under Jake Starr made excellent use
of what nature had
given us
and completed the scheduled 7-race series with ease.
The event
attracted 16
entries, many dressed in new sails which got a good
pre-Worlds work-out.
After
placing 1-2
in separate boats last year, Al Schönborn
and Marc Bennett, took the 2004 Canadian title as a
team preparing for
the 2004
Wayfarer Worlds at Port Credit YC. While the
champions' speed was up to
snuff,
it was their wile and experience that made the
difference, as Marc and
Al
regularly emerged from close races among the top
half dozen boats to
place 1-2,
often at the last second on the downwind finishes of
the pair of
windward-leeward sausages that constituted each of
the seven races.
There was a tie for the runner-up position between
Mark and
Paul Taylor of Mississauga
SC,
and Heider Funck with Tom Wharton of TSCC. The Taylors
began their series with an unspectacular 8th in the
light-air opener
but then
got it in gear: they ran off a 1-2-2-3-3 string and
were poised to win
the
finale, only to dump in a vicious gust as they
tacked around the final
windward
mark with the lead. For North American champion,
Heider Funck,
meanwhile, the
entire first day was forgettable - lowlighted by a
6th and an OCS.
Sunday was a
different story however, as Heider and Tom scored
two superb firsts
before
Heider began to feel pain from his recent surgery.
Still, he gutted it
out and
grabbed a 5th in the finale and a tie for series
second with Mark.
Kitchener's Paul and Alan Laderoute sailed
consistently well
on the Saturday (3-3-5-4) which they ended in series
3rd but
inexplicably fell
to 9-9-8 on the Sunday, and ended up 4th overall,
which was however,
easily
good enough to win the award for the best
performance by a crew sailing
the
Nationals for the first time.
Also giving a good account of themselves in this
series were
Dutton's Roger Shepherd and Joanne K who again
revelled in the
breezier
going, and took 5th overall to beat their seed by
two places. Joanne
and Roger
also won the Sweet Award as the
best-placed male-female crew in the Canadian
Nationals.
And congratulations to our most traveled team of
2004: Ottawa's
Doug
Netherton teamed up with Winnipeg's
Roger
Redwin and did very well in the breezy going they
love so well.
Despite a
couple of capsize-related 13ths, Roger and Doug
improved on their 14th
seed by
a whopping 8 places to win the Most
Improved pennants very decisively. This was
Doug's first time
helming in
the Canadian Nationals. Congratulations on a fine
series, Doug and
Roger!
Another team improving on their seed (by three
places!) were Kitchener's
Dwight
Aplevich and Al
Nichols who sailed a consistent series, highlighted
by 4th-place
finishes in
each day's opener, and ended up series 7th.
8th place ended up a tie between London's
John
and Dolores de Boer, and Mike Codd who was sailing
George
Blanchard's Red Top with Kirk
Iredale. The latter
saved
their best for last as they sailed to a sparkling
2nd in the very
breezy finale
where their ample hiking weight was used to very
good effect. The de
Boers,
meanwhile, had their series high point early,
scoring a fine 2nd in the
opener
before running out of gas as the winds came up on
Saturday which they
ended
with a DNF and a DNC. But the rest seemed to do John
and Dolores some
good as
they coped well (5-5-7)
with
Sunday's challenging breezes.
A below par series for TSCC's John Cawthorne and
David
Weatherston who got the winds they usually do very
well in, but who did
not get
untracked until they scored a 4th in the finale. In
the end, that 4th
was just
enough to squeeze John and David past TSCC
clubmates, Kit Wallace (with
Anna
Wharton) and Hans Gottschling (with Pedro Santos)
into 10th overall.
Detroit's
Nick
Seraphinoff teamed up with his step-grandson,
Joe Blackmore, to win the Sweet Award
as Best Parent/ Offspring Team, and should also have
won an award for
having
more guts than sense: Doing very well in the finale
after the wind had
screamed
up to well over 20 knots, Nick and Joe put the
spinnaker up for the
run. As
Nick relates it, "Everything was just fine until the
gybe, and you know
how Joe is just learning the spinnaker …" Anyway,
Nick and Joe suffered
no
ill effects from their swim in a surprisingly mild
Lake Ontario, and
did score a
couple of good finishes while being happy with their
boat speed.
It was a similar tale (without the capsize under
spinnaker)
for TSCC's Peter Kozak and Annelies Groen. They,
too, had acceptable
boat speed
and a couple of very respectable finishes, but a
lack of consistency
left them
languishing in series 14th.
The standings were rounded out by a pair of TSCC
crews who
only sailed about half the races: Getting W3613
tuned up for the Worlds
where
she would be sailed by the Isle of Man team of John
Dowling and Terry
Holt,
were Tim Bider and Jon Banksam, while Anne and Gary
Armstrong were
doing the
same for Saw Dust, except that in
their case, it was a tune-up for their own first
appearance in a
Wayfarer
Worlds.
On behalf of all the competitors, my thanks go to
Tom
Wharton, Derek Griffiths and the TSCC, and to Jake
Starr and his Race
Committee
for again giving us a fine championship. It was a
wonderful warm-up for
the
Worlds, as well as great socializing!
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