(181121)   On October 27-28 in HOT VII, Oriental (NC) Wayfarers, Richard Johnson and wife, Michele (above right) became the first team to win the overall HOT title for two consecutive years. This year's HOT was, as always, a Lake Townsend YC-hosted pre-Hallowe'en fund-raiser for earlier.org, which raises money to fund research into earlier detection of breast cancer. Sailing-wise, the weather was perfect: not too cold and relatively steady medium-strength winds.

With ten boats participating, Wayfarers were again the largest fleet  in the overall group of 21 boats which also included six Flying Scots, two Buccaneers plus solos of Tanzer 16, Isotope and Laser Vago. Wayfarers took the top four places overall on corrected time. Having been seeded 4th among Wayfarers, Richard Johnson and Michele Parish (below) also took Wayfarer Most Improved honours with 4-1-4-1-3 finishes among Wayfarers.


5-3-1-2-4 placings were good enough to give Lake Townsend's Uwe Heine and wife, Nancy Collins (above) a solid series 2nd, two points back of the Johnsons and three points up on Jim Cook and his pick-up crew,  Cathy Leonard (below) who scored 18 points from 1-6-5-4-2 finishes.
Again making the long trip down to Greensboro from Canada, Oakville, Ontario's Al Schonborn teamed up with local sailing newcomer, David Stifler (above) on the Saturday at considerable cost to the nerves of both. Nonetheless, they appeared to come out of the three Saturday races with 2-3-4 finishes among Wayfarers until they discovered they had been over early (OCS) in race 3. That evening David came down with the flu and had to bow out of Sunday's two races. Luckily for Uncle Al, Ali Kishbaugh, with considerably greater crewing experience, was willing to step in for David, and this SHADES a.k.a. Glory Days team (below) immediately sailed like a well oiled machine, placing 3-1 to complete their HOT regatta on a high note. Counting only the Wayfarers, Al and crews placed only one point back of Jim Cook , 4th overall, but counting the entire 21-boat HOT fleet, it was Jim and Linda Heffernan (below) who placed 4th overall as Al's race 3 OCS became far more costly in the larger fleet, moving him down from first to 6th overall (34 points instead of 15 after his race 3 5th across the finish line).

Below par finishes for Jim's Lake Townsend clubmate, AnnMarie Covington, who teamed up with Kim Durack (Sat.) and Jason Reiner (Sun.) for 6-4-3-6-8 finishes in our strong, evenly matched fleet, ending series 6th, two points behind Jim and Linda.

Nova Scotia's Iain Tulloch and wife, Lesley, (above) introduced us to W861, freshly and beautifully re-built by Iain (below). Things looked great as they started their series with a 3rd but as the winds picked up a bit they found that Sawdust really had trouble pointing with the other Wayfarers. An impromptu coaching session was therefore held dockside after the day's racing, that the Tullochs said they found helpful. And they did end their series placing a most respectable 5th in the finale.

Series 8th went to the local team of Evan Trudeau and Yukako Tayashima (above) who were the only other Wayfarer team to compete in all five races. Tied at 49 points were another two more or less local teams: Trish McDermott with Ali Kishbaugh (from away, as they say in Newfoundland) (below) who only raced as a team on the first day, and ...

... Ken Butler with Jeannie Allamby (above) who only completed one Saturday race before capsizing and nearly sinking (below) during race 2.