Once again this year, the Toronto Sailing & Canoe Club, led by George Blanchard, Jake Starr and Tom Wharton, hosted a fine Canadian Wayfarer Nationals on Aug. 27-28.


Their efforts were rewarded by the largest Wayfarer turnout of 2005 (19 boats), and by a fine sailing weekend on Toronto's Humber Bay off Ontario Place.


Saturday brought nice SE winds of 10 to 15 knots under overcast but warm skies (see photo above), and we got four races in before PRO, Jake Starr, wisely called it a day, and sent us all in before the threatened rain arrived just after a delicious steak BBQ that was included in the entry.


By Sunday morning the skies had been washed clean (see photo above) and a hot late summer's day brought us southerly winds of 5 to 10 knots, which allowed Jake to complete the full schedule of seven twice-around windward-leeward races.

Defending champions, Al Schonborn and Marc Bennett, demonstrated the benefits of having done lots of racing in 2005. They were just that little bit sharper much of the time, and rolled to an impressive six firsts. In the person of Marc, Uncle Al had not only the advantage of an ace crew who knows and can execute all the routines flawlessly, but also a great source of advice on sail shape and strategy. Thus, even when the SHADES team rounded off the first beat well behind on a few occasions, Marc's spinnaker work with our beloved old, red chute #8868, given Al by Mike McNamara in 1992, plus timely, well thought out strategy, enabled us to make comebacks every time. And just to show he can do it all, Marc helmed SHADES to a win in the finale.

Even though Al and Marc ultimately came up with the edge, the weekend's racing was enjoyably close as most of the 19 teams were pretty evenly matched in speed, and the results were usually determined by boat handling and strategy.  No fewer than five different boats scored second-place finishes in the seven-race series, and an amazing 17 of the 19 boats registered at least one single-digit finish (i.e. 9th or better).

The race for the runner-up position went down to the finish of the final race where MSC's Mark and Paul Taylor overtook TSCC's Alastair and David Ryder-Turner right at the finish to avoid a second-place tie with the latter, a piece of excitement that subsequently became academic as Alastair ended up DSQ out of a 5th in a finish-line entanglement in race 6.

The Taylors' road to second place not an easy one as they began the series with their throw-out (a 6th) and then had to count a 5th from race 3. Having very successfully campaigned a lot of this year in keelboats, the Taylor boys were understandably rusty at the beginning of this, their first W regatta of 2005. But in the end, Mark and Paul were less inconsistent than their main rivals, and turned a 2-5-3-3-2-2 into the red runner-up flags.

The battle over third place ended up in a tie between Team Ryder-Turner and Stephan Larson who was helming for his father-in-law, Tom Wharton. Tom's usual regatta helm, sailmaker Heider Funck, was unable to sail because he was still recovering from health difficulties. Stephan had a tough set of conditions to cope with in his first Wayfarer helming stint in several years: Humber Bay's special, weird cross chop. He, too, began with his drop (12th) and added 5-3-6 placings on Saturday, before Sunday brought less difficult waves, an easier jib and very nice 2-3-5 finishes. At the other end of the spectrum, were Alastair and David Ryder-Turner, who correctly read the SE wind conditions as requiring the far left side of the beat to be played. Showing fine boat speed and handling, Alastair and son, David, came out of the left corner with a huge lead over half a dozen other boats who had gone left, and an even bigger lead over the right-side boats led limping around the mark by 8th-place Uncle Al who had been busy making sure the Taylor brothers and Stefan/Tom did not "get away". Although the speedy Al/Marc team had recovered to 2nd by the end of the first run, Alastair and David held on with cool poise to take the first-race gun. A 9th in Saturday's final race was their only blot in the first day's results, one they had to count when the race 6 DSQ came along.

Kudos to Alastair (and to John Weakley) whose protest behaviour was not only a model of courtesy and good sportsmanship, but whose recollection of the "incident" was actually identical - they first time Uncle Al had seen such a thing in 50 years of protest experience. Anyway, both crews ended up with 24 points and had to share the blue third-place flags. But the awards were not yet done for Alastair and David who also took the Ron Gillespie Award for the best finish by a parent-offspring team, and, having been seeded 12th, they were also our Most Improved team of the 2005 Nationals. Honourable mention in the latter department to Stefan who, according to our computer, was supposed to place 9th but beat that prediction by 6 places!! Well done, guys!!!

London's John and Dolores de Boer overcame a poor 11-11-8  start to their series after finally adjusting their sails to the choppy conditions and edged out two other male-female teams for series 5th, Mike and Janet Codd by one point and Ottawa's Doug Netherton with Françoise Brossard by three points. In doing so, the de Boers won the Sweet Award which goes to the top-placed male-female team in each year's Nationals. Well done, all three teams!!!

8th place found the successfully reconstituted Cottonwood team of Hans Gottschling and John Weakley, their series highlighted by a couple of great 4ths, edging out Hans' TSCC clubmate, Kit Wallace with David Weatherston by a mere single point. Kit and David had started their Nationals with a most promising 3-7-2 but Sunday saw them have their troubles as they got only one finish to their liking (a 6th) and that went under due to an OCS (over early)!!

TSCC Commodore, Peter Kozak, sailed very well in this series with Annelies Groen and then his wife, Linda, when Annelies could not continue. Team Kozak scored five single-digit finishes in the seven races and only finished as low as 10th overall due to having to count a DNS. Well done, Peter, Annelies and Linda!

Close behind Peter in 11th and 12th were TSCC's Fred Black (one point back) and Pickering's Ivan Pedersen (two points back). Fred sailed Saturday with regular crew, Michael Kachkovsky, but could not sail Sunday. So Michael took the helm on Sunday with his wife, Kate Linkova, doing the crew duties, and did a fine job that included a 7th in the day's first race. For Ivan and his son, Chris, it was their belated 2005 Wayfarer racing debut, and they too - not unexpectedly - were off to a slow start in their series.

Another pair of TSCC teams followed as Dave Platt with Lou Scaglione took series 13th (highlighted by an excellent 6th in race 6!!) ahead of Reg Bunt and his son, Christopher, who began their series with a great 7th but could never recapture that touch in the subsequent races.

North Bay's Sue Pilling and Stephan Romaniuk borrowed a boat to sail in this, their first Wayfarer Nationals, and won the Rookie Trophy while placing 15th. It was a tough fleet in which to sail a strange boat with strange sails and Sue and Stephan survived it all with never a moan. It was a pleasure to sail with you, Sue and Stephan! And to see Sue's dad again whom we hadn't seen since the days when Mirrors raced the Warm Water!!


No sailing fun on Saturday for Bob Kennedy and son, Scott, who discovered when they arrived at TS, that their board had come down during the drive from London's Fanshawe YC, and been ground to a fine but displaced edge by Hwy 401. They tried sanding and sailing, but a couple of Saturday races found them pointing so woefully that they packed it in and began tip surgery on their board which was successful - see photo above, and their Sunday 8-9-7 placings which certainly beat their pair of 18ths from Saturday!!

A first-race 8th got things off to a promising start for Geoff Edwards and Dave Codd (cousin of Mike Codd who was sailing with Dave's wife). Alas, things did not go as well in the other races, and Team Jansubar came out ahead of only two more TSCC teams: Thomas Vendely with Steve Szenasi, and Ted Lacelle with Sebastian Pfannkuche. Showing that we've come a long way in Wayfarers, all the boats regularly flew their spinnakers and did it well - often in weather that, 30 years ago, would have seen much of the fleet too cautious to try.

All in all, a great regatta. Thanks from all of us competitors to the many volunteers who gave up their time to make our fun possible!!!