the MSC Wayfarer/CL Regatta
Mississauga Sailing Club * September 17-18, 2011
reports by Uncle Al and Steph Romaniuk
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MSC win for Chich team, Sue and Steph (W397)
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The weekend of Sept. 17-18, 2011 favoured us with cool, sunny weather and lovely moderate breezes as Parry Sound's Sue Pilling (above) and Steph Romaniuk captured first place in the annual Mississauga SC Wayfarer/CL Regatta. Complete results posted. Steph and Sue left no doubt about their champion status as they counted five first and one second in our seven-race series. Second place in our 10-boat fleet went to Jim and Linda Heffernan of Chapel Hill, North Carolina who counted 2-2-4-2-4-2 for 16 overall points. The race for 3rd place ended in a tie between two Toronto Sailing & Canoe Club teams: Kit Wallace teamed up with Peter Kozak to score 2-3-3-5-5-5 while defending champion, Al Schonborn discovered he is too old to take on the dual challenge of a "strange" boat plus a learner crew. Nonetheless, Al and crew, Richard Watterson of Hummelstown, PA had an interesting and mostly enjoyable series as they shared helming duties aboard Bubbles, Richard's brand new Hartley MK IV #10862. In the end, Richard and Al got their 23 points from counting 3-5-1-1-2-DNC. Al's assessment of the new Wayfarer:
  • it is beautiful and relatively easy to make go fast
  • the rigging is beautifully and thoughtfully laid out
  • personal gripes: the floor is too high and the decks are too low for my comfort level; I would put the shock cord that tensions the aft hiking straps on a hook so that tension can be easily removed and I can comfortably do my roll tack without tripping over the straps and living in fear of falling out of the boat; I would by-pass the spi launcher and use my W3854 balls system spi sheet arrangement complete with mimi-bowsprit to keep the sheets from going under the boat; there is no place to put the open beers
Ending up within three points overall were the numbers 5, 6 and 7 boats: Despite two OCSs, Detroit's Nick Seraphinoff and Nikos Damaskinos hung on to grab 5th overall by a single point ahead of Mississauga's Gary McIlroy, our only CL 16 in the series this year. The 10th-seeded Gary sailed Saturday with John Butt, and Sunday with Bruce Buckingham on his way to 6th overall and Most Improved honours for 2011. And what a joy it was to see Brantford's Brian Hickman (below left) back among us once more after a lengthy absence. These days, Brian is more often to be found crewing aboard Mike Homer's keelboat on Lake Erie, but this weekend Mike got a taste of dinghies and crewing.


Series 8th went to the Mississauga SC team of Rob Wierdsma and Dave Platt. It took a while but Dave and Rob finally got their act together and finished the series with a very fine 4th. TSCC's Mike Codd and 9-year-old Lilly placed a misleading 9th overall: Due to seasickness caused by the considerable Lake Ontario chop on both days, Lilly had to sit out some races, but the three races they did manage to complete saw Lilly and Mike score  fine 3-4-5. Perfect hosts award to Rod Anderson and Rod McIver of the host club who ended up a single point behind the Codds in 10th place overall.
From: Steph Romaniuk
To: David & Carol Hansman
Sent: Monday, September 19, 2011 3:40 PM
Subject: CL16/Wayfarers at MSC

It was a great weekend. Sunny mostly with varied breezes. Pretty steady 10 knots Sat. and drifter to 10 knots on Sunday. We did 4 and 3 races, Sat, Sun, respectively and did an olympic course for 2 races Sunday. We were a bit sloppy on gybing from reach to reach. We had great competition between the 10 boats, with lots of variety in placements. Al and Richard Watterson tied for 3rd with Kit Wallace and crew despite a DNS and DNF. This left the battle for top spot between us and the Heffernans.

We had a couple downwind comebacks in race 1 and 7 to beat the Hartley and the Heffernans, respectively. The latter were moving splendidly and had Sue concerned by the end of the regatta. The last win should've been theirs, but sans spinnaker, it didn't work out. I think they rig their spinnaker on the starboard side, so the were avoiding a windward launch and had a sizeable lead. We felt bad for taking away their bullet. Little little (Lilly) battled with seasickness and missed 3 races Sat. She and Mike were out again Sunday and she was having a good time picking up balloons out of the lake, handing out George pins. She even slept through race 6 in the bottom of Red Top. Soo cute! Unfortunately, she tossed her cookies when she woke up. Lucky for us, but too bad for most, the wind picked up to about 15 knots an hour after we got off the water Sunday.
 
Debating about the pumpkin now as the training for working the Provincial Elections is on the Saturday :) Think I may have to turn down the extra money for the DeBoer party, great sailing and a turkey dinner...
 
All the best,
 
Steph


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