Clean sweep for Uncle Al and Tom Wharton at first two-day MSC Regatta

It was like revisiting the Thursday of the Worlds as the first full-weekend Wayfarer/CL16 Regatta began Saturday 18 September at the Mississauga SC - a cool day with a large left-over chop from the south-east overlaid by a gusty north wind. Luckily for us sailors, the winds never gusted much over 12 knots, and we had the racing to take our minds off other things - like seasickness. Our RC Chairman, Bruce Buckingham, had to come ashore, he was feeling so bad. John Wilkinson, who took over for Bruce, wasn't feeling much better but he and his committee stuck it out for four races in the queasy-making slop on Saturday. We were wondering why the start line ended up uncrossable on starboard and long enough to accommodate the Worlds fleet of 60 boats, but became instantly un-critical when we heard how our RC had been too sick to move anything. Thanks for making such a sacrifice for us, guys.

Sunday was, by contrast, perfect for RC and competitors alike: warm, sunny, a bit of a swell and 5 to 8 knots of wind from the ESE. The RC got off three more races in short order to complete the hoped-for seven-race series with fine start lines and perfect courses.

Defending champions, Al Schönborn and Tom Wharton, were not seriously pushed in winning all seven races in the 11-boat fleet which consisted of seven Wayfarers and four CL's racing together. The Wayfarer competition made life easy for Tom and Al on the Saturday as they left the SHADES team to grab the favoured end virtually uncontested. Thus they gave up an advantage of hundreds of yards right from the start and Al was hard to catch after that.

Scoring a clear second place among the Wayfarers were TSCC's Kit Wallace and David Weatherston. Fresh from their successful appearance in Wayfarer Worlds 2004, David and Kit ran off seven 2nds, most of which saw them beat all four CL's.

A close battle over series third ended up going to TSCC's Fred Black with his novice crew, Michael Kachkovsky, who edged out clubmates, Ed Tait and Chris Walroth by a mere two points. The Tait/Walroth duo did however, beat their 6th seed by a couple of places and thus earned the honour of being the regatta's Most Improved Wayfarer team.

MSC Wayfarer newcomers, Pawel Wojcik and Gus Bazos, had a sound first regatta, holding onto series 5th just ahead of Dave Daniel (with Emily) and the two Rods (Anderson and McIver) who only sailed the three Sunday races.

Competition was very even among the top three CL's but consistency ended up winning the day for Coburg's Colin Junkin and Heather Wood who scored three wins and three seconds to hold off a late charge by MSC's Gary McIlroy and Glenn Ainsworth which saw the latter win three of the final four races among the CL's. MSC's Rob Wierdsma and his now full-sized son, Ben, started with a 2-1-2 in Saturday's windier conditions but were unable to keep it up and ended up third, a couple of points behind Gary. The high point for newcomers, Robert Harper and Charles Kosa, was race 3, in which they beat out Gary and Glenn.