Marc Bennett and Michele Parish capture weather-shortened Midwinters

Marc Bennett from Toronto, Ontario and Michele Parish from Charlotte, North Carolina are our 2006 Midwinter Wayfarer champions, winning the overall and Spinnaker Fleet titles. The freshly created Bennett/Parish team sailed W3854 SHADES to 2-1-1 finishes to prevail over an 18-boat fleet at the Eastern Midwinters hosted by the incomparable Lake Eustis SC February 3-5. The Non-Spinnaker Fleet title was taken Eddie Kraft, a 76-year-old local sailor who teamed up with longtime friend, Bob Francis from Toledo, Ohio, and placed 6th overall.

Although the LESC members did their usual magnificent best to make our stay and our sailing pleasurably memorable, they could not entirely overcome cool and windy weather which forced cancellation of three races scheduled for each of Friday and Saturday.


On the cool, overcast Friday, an established system and an incoming front did battle over Lake Eustis all day. We got fine sailing winds and the RC even tried to start our racing around mid-day, but then the thunder and lightning began once more. We were wisely sent back to shore. Fairly shortly thereafter, Dave Williams, our PRO, cancelled the day's racing, letting everyone begin to make alternative plans while huddling around the free draft beer. In the end, this move was inspired as the rumble of thunder overhead continued into the evening hours while the sunshine of the incoming cold front hovered tantalizingly on the western horizon all day (see photo above).

By Saturday morning, the front had finally moved through, leaving us with very cool weather (barely above 50ºF) and bright sunshine but whistling west winds of 25 - 30 knots that the forecast correctly said would blow most of the day. The day's racing was abandoned early enough to let competitors choose to do something else for the day. A few of us hung around the club to make sure the draft beer did not go stale and to watch Hans Gottschling pack up and leave for Toronto in disgust at the weather. By late afternoon, winds abated a bit, and a few of us decided that a little sailing was in order (see photo of Marc and Uncle Al below).


This got our appetites up for the evening task of testing the emergency replacement caterer that Mike and Dotty Murto had "whistled up" that morning when the scheduled caterer had to cancel out due to storm damage from the previous night. The dinner passed the taste and quantity test with flying colours! Thanks, Dotty and Mike!!


Sunday at last brought sailable wind and weather: sunshine and north winds of 10 to 15 knots, gusting to perhaps 20 a few times (see photo above). Having moved the first-race start up to 0900 hrs, the RC put us and the 27-boat Flying Scot fleet with whom we were sharing the regatta through three brisk windward-leeward races, and had us done by 1300 hrs or so. A quick scoring job by Tom Kidd while we put our boats away, had the awards ceremony get underway without delay, and those who wished to, were able to leave before 1500 hrs.

In Wayfarers, series 2nd went to Michigan's Joe DeBrincat. The 5th-seeded Joe showed the benefits of having his son, Brian, who sails an International 14 on Chesapeake Bay, and who is an ace crew. After winning race 1, the DeBrincats did however have a fight on their hands, and only managed a couple of 3rds in the next two races. This just barely enabled them to hang onto series 2nd as Maine Maritime Academy Coach, Butch Minson sailing with his sister, Ellen, in her LESC-based W improved with each race. The latter ended up with a 4-2-2 for series 3rd, a single point in back of the DeBrincats. 

The two crews aboard SHADES (Marc and Michele) certainly got the better of their helms as Richard Johnson (Charlotte) and Uncle Al (Oakville, Ontario) in this series, as Richard with Al as crew, could do no better than series 4th off 3-4-5 placings in Free Range Chickin. Richard did have the Chickin moving as well as any other boat but tactician, Al, did not have his best weekend and wasted a lot of Richard's good efforts.

A mere two points back and 5th overall, was the first Lake Eustis boat in the shape of Gale Shoemaker who had imported son, Gary, for the event. Gale and Gary actually came to within two inches of tieing Richard for series 4th, they lost by that margin to the Chickin in a shortened-course downwind finish. And that finish might well have resulted in a most interesting protest: when Al called for room at the finish mark about four lengths from the finish line, Gary (a USSA Judge) replied that we had not reached the (Two-Length) Zone. That was really all we had time for - after that we were in the Zone and then crossing the line in a virtual dead heat with Richard having sort of forced buoy room and Gale having been too much the gentleman to hit us. A protest would have been fun, educational, and hard to decide: Al was convinced that given the brisk winds, we were indeed "about to pass" the finish mark, even at 4 lengths' distance, while Gary would presumably have contended that "about to pass" did not apply until the lead boat entered the Zone. My own rationale was that the Rules are written throughout in such a way as to prevent collisions and the need for unseamanlike haste in one's reactions and that if we had let Gale luff us up any further at 4 lengths from the mark, we would have had to do a crash gybe with a real risk of running down the RC boat and/or capsizing onto it if we were still to finish without passing the RC on the wrong side. Thus, to my mind, we were indeed "about to pass" the finish mark even at 4 lengths from it and Rule 18 (Buoy Room) therefore applied. Anyway, it was an exciting finish and lots of fun, and maybe this situation is something Gary and I can discuss at the Midwinters next year!! Should take a beer or three!!


In series 6th, we had the Non-Spinnaker Division winners, the previously mentioned Eddie Kraft and Bob Francis (see photo above, Eddie on the right), whose consistent 7-7-7 finishes were clearly the best among the two-sail group. Five points back we had a points tie for series 7th which was decided in favour of the father-and-son team of Peter and Peter Hylen on the "most firsts, most seconds, etc." method when their best finish, a 6th, beat out the best finish by Mo Metcalf, an 8th. Peter was also declared Midwinters Most Improved after pointing out he had finished last in 2005. This however failed to mention that Peter had sailed only one of 6 races. The Hylens also took runner-up honours in the two-sail fleet.

Meanwhile, Mo Metcalf who "commutes" the 6-hour drive from Atlanta to regularly sail in the LESC club races, showed significant improvement with Kevin Rankin, a fine young LESC MC Scow sailor, as crew: Mo and Kevin placed series 8th, moving past nearly half of the 12 boats who beat Mo in 2005 when he sailed all 6 races. Well done, Mo and Kevin!! You have my vote as Most Improved!!!

Only one point back at 28 points were the two-helm LESC team of Mike Tighe and Jim Lingeman who took turns helming Mike's W and placed a solid 3rd among the non-spinnakers. Jim and Mike's high point came with their 6th in the finale where they kept right up with Richard and Al down a run in which they sailed two sails against three, and then nearly beat the Chickin across the finish line!

Rounding out the top 10 of our 2006 Midwinters was USWA Commodore, Mike Anspach, who got a definite shot in the arm by having his son, Steve, as an enthusiastic crew. The W4271 team improved two places over their seed. Well done, guys!


After over 20 years away from Wayfarers, North Carolina's Jim and Linda Heffernan made a promising return in series 11th despite a DNF due to a broken rudder in race 2. With a replacement rudder delivered by a very kind rescue boat crew, Jim and Linda were ready to race again by the start of race 3. And what a race it started out as: With their museum-piece blown-out Greiner sails they led off the first beat, and even sailing without a spinnaker, still led series winner, Marc Bennett, as the two leaders rounded onto beat #2 (see photo above). Things went downhill for them after that but Jim and Linda showed that they still have the talent that saw them win the US Nationals in 1979 and place 11th in the 1980 Wayfarer Worlds!!

It was two more Lake Eustis W's in a close fight over series 12th. In the end, Mike Murto with Arlen Bensen prevailed over the husband-and-wife team of Dave and Jane Hepting by a couple of points, but it was a promising result for both teams as each beat their seeded, computer-predicted finish.

We were happy to have our newest southern Wayfarer, Lou Karably of Canton, Georgia, sailing with us for the first time. He and his son, Ben, had to be more disappointed than anyone as the first two days of racing were wiped out, all the while knowing that a work conflict meant they had to leave for home after Sunday's first race. Still, a 14th in their much enjoyed - I hear - debut, gave them series 14th.

LESC's Ted Benedict and Candy Robb also only managed one race in which they placed 15th which was also their series standing. No untoward excitement for Uncle Al to write about this year, however!

Also present but not sailing any races were

• Tony Krauss and Mary Abel from Fredericksburg, Virginia: Tony did conquer numerous glasses (cups) of beer however, while Mary was victorious over whole armies of veggies!!
  
• LESC W, Robert Hart with Nick Seraphinoff of Traverse City, MI as crew: Sunday's cool breezes were a bit too much for Dr. Hart's tastes, but by then Nick had managed to have lots of fun sailing his "new" Flying Dutchman with Brian De Brincat on the wire, and --- as Nick pointed out to Marc and me, "You guys may have had a lot of fun, but only I have Mungo!!!" (the Mungo tale will eventually be told as part of the photo captions and be available by clicking here and going to the bottom of the page)
  
• Toronto's Hans Gottschling with new crew, Bastian Pfannkuche, who left Saturday night

Many sincere thanks to the whole Lake Eustis Sailing Club in general for letting us visitors share your marvellous sailing locale, and in particular to:

• Dotty and Mike Murto who again did tons of great work in making our 2006 Midwinters the wonderful experience that it was
  
• Dave and Joan Williams, our extremely capable Race Officers, who again made no mistakes and all the right decisions
• Denis Oldham, Scott Tillema, Dave Moring and the other volunteers aboard the safety boats
• Dave Moring for taking dozens of great sailing shots seen elsewhere on this site
• Scott Tillema for giving me a great C Scow ride on Saturday and for introducing Marc and me to "the Captain" (Captain Morgan's Rum) and the Oyster Troff  - actually, there's a cute story here: Marc and I first met Scott the Saturday night before the Midwinters as we arrived at the club to drop off SHADES. Scott was talking about how he and the Captain would be running a safety boat during the Midwinters, returning a favour the Wayfarers do during Scow regattas. Having just heard that Richard Kinnie would be unavailable to take pictures for us as he did so wonderfully last year (hip replacement surgery), my ears picked up and I asked Scott if he might be willing to take some pics with the CWA camera while he and the Captain ran the rescue boat. As Scott gave an affirmative reply, Mike Murto muttered in my other ear: "You do know who the Captain is, don't you? Captain Morgan?" "Oh..." I eloquently replied.

See you all same time next year at Lake Eustis!!