Eight Wayfarers acquitted themselves very well in a 31-boat fleet that turned out for the 3rd annual Hallowe'en-on-the-Townsend (HOT) Regatta hosted by the Lake Townsend YC October 25-26 outside of Greensboro, NC.  Again this year, the event raised hundreds of dollars for earlier.org, a charity devoted to paying for research into the earlier detection of breast cancer. The weather gods obviously approved of our fund-raising efforts as the provided summer temperatures of around 80°F.

Three of the five scheduled races were sailed in light, rather fitful zephyrs that were quite challenging and mastered by no one. Sunday's remaining two races got glorious breezes of 8 to 20 knots and got us off the water in plenty of time for silent auction results, raffle, lunch and awards. The RC had cleverly decided to start us in two flights with the bigger, faster boats starting first to avoid having us smaller guys trampled right off the start by the Scots, the Lightnings and the Isotope catamarans. The second group included mostly Wayfarers and Windmills, two beautifully evenly matched designs. Elapsed times for each boat were digested by the Portsmouth Handicap system and produced a very well matched group in the overall results.

Rock Hall's Ralph and Sandy Sponar ended up the grand champions, sailing their Windmill to a 6-3-2-4-3 record in this no-drop series, a reflection of how evenly matched we were - as were the scores of two Wayfarers, Jim and Linda Heffernan (7-1-5-6-5) and Al Schonborn with Tom Erickson (9-5-4-5-1)who tied for second overall at 24 points. The latter won the tie-breaker 1-4 to 1-5 and got to take home Wayfarer bragging rights. Series 4th went to Richard Johnson and his wife, Michele, of Charlotte, NC who had two great races (1-2) but 8-9-8 beyond that. Rounding out the top five was another Windmill, Allen Chauvenet and his lovely daughter, Christina. The hot rumour here is that in next year's Chester River Race at Rock Hall, Allen and Christina will trade boats with Al Schonborn who will get acquainted with Beauty and the Beast while the Chauvenets will sail a spinnaker boat for the first time, Al's Wayfarer SHADES a.k.a. Glory Days.

Sailing Nick Seraphinoff's Impulse  to series 6th were 5-0-5 sailor, Andy Forman and Chip Cunningham whose series was highlighted by a sparkling 2nd overall in race 2. It was not until 7th overall that we saw the first of the bigger boats, Tom Bews and Otto Afanador in their Flying Scot. Tom and Otto had much better success in Sunday's breezier conditions where they scored 1-4 after Saturday's 12-17-14. The lone Holder 20, Bob Hoffman with Hudson Barker was hurt by lack of consistency: 1-12-3-20-16 and ended up series 8th, ahead of AnnMarie Covington and Robert Simac who made it 5 of the 8 Wayfarers in the top 9.

Rounding out the top ten was another of the ten Flying Scots, Steve Jones and Dennis Miller, who will have fond memories of the first race in which they placed a fine 4th overall. None of our beloved Wayfarers finished out of the top 20: Ken Butler of the host LTYC and Susan Cole took 12th overall, highlighted by an impressive 4th-place finish in race 2, while Ali Kishbaugh of Charlotte's Catawba YC teamed up with LTYC's Mike Sigmund in Jim Heffernan's #2 Wayfarer  to  place 14th. Sailing the LTYC "club" Wayfarer to series 19th despite a missed race, were  Jeanne  Allamby  and Phil Leonard of the host club.

You could, in fact, say that we had another Wayfarer in the top 20: Trish McDermott (and her husband, Scott Bogue) recently brought Don Silsbe's Wayfarer to Lake Townsend but wanted to soak up some knowledge by crewing before racing their recently acquired W1392. Trish crewed on LTYC Commodore, Alan Taylor's Windmill and placed series 18th. From what we saw this weekend, Trish and Scott will be a fabulous addition to the Wayfarer family!! Thanks for joining us …!!

Congratulations also to two young ladies of thirteen who coped very well with the weekend's sailing challenges: young Avery was sailing in a Scot with her dad, Steve Morris, and took a fine series 14th, highlighted by a 3rd and a 7th overall in races 1 and 3. Also in a Flying Scot, Laina Wilson sailed with her father, Mark, and looked good as they placed 21st overall, not helped by a first-race OCS (over early).

On behalf of all of the many happy visitors, I thank the Lake Townsend YC and all of its many, fine volunteers for making such a fine effort to ensure an unforgettable weekend for us all.