| 2009 Wayfarer
Midwinters & U.S. Nationals report by Uncle Al ... |
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Train Derailment Gets
Wayfarers Back on Track
It's an ill wind - as
they say - that blows no one good. The 10th annual
Wayfarer Midwinters, which doubled this year as the U.S.
Nationals, was about to be truncated to a disappointing
four races by Sunday 8 February at noon when a rare
train rolled past on the tracks which we cross to access
the host Lake Eustis SC. As the train got about half-way
past our crossing, it suddenly crunched to a halt. Word
quickly spread that its three locomotives had been
derailed and that we would be trapped inside the club
grounds for a minimum of four hours. While this upset a
couple of our teams who needed to start their long trip
home as soon as possible, we made the best of a bad
situation: Our super Race Committee, chaired by Dave and
Joan Williams, quickly got us out onto the water for two
more races in winds that were finally starting to pick
up all over the three-by-five-mile expanse of Lake
Eustis.
 By the time two Sunday
heats had been completed, our 14 Wayfarer teams had
enjoyed six very closely contested races in mostly light
winds of four to eight knots. Our three-day series,
running from Friday 6 Feb through Sunday, the 8th, was
blessed with lovely sunshine and pleasant temperatures
in the 60's and 70's F. Unfortunately, Saturday brought
only enough wind for one race so that 35 MC Scows who
had come in from all over the southern states ended up
with a disappointing one-race "series" because their NOR
had stated a 12 noon cut-off time. However, all was not
lost: Due to the fine efforts of MC stalwarts, Dave
Moring and Scott Tillema, the Wayfarers and the MC's got
to mingle in a very friendly manner, and everyone had a
great time.
Our sincerely heartfelt thanks to the many willing, cheerful and oh so capable volunteers - mostly from the Lake Eustis SC!
 As always, our Lake
Eustis Sailing Club hosts had our social and
sustenance needs well looked after with breakfast and
lunch available in the beautiful clubhouse (above). Friday
evening saw the Wayfarers gather at the Quarterdeck Restaurant
where our regatta organizers, Dotty and Mike Murto, had
made reservations. It was a pleasant outing, highlighted
by Jim and Linda Heffernan's leading us in singing the Wayfarer Song,
lyrics to which they had preserved from last year's
International Rally at Hermit Island. The text was
available in the original Danish, in French, in English
as well as in Dutch. My crew made an attempt at the
Dutch in honour of our two Dutch skippers, who smiled a
pained smile. To me, Nick's rendition sounded very much
like the sounds he and I had made after getting food
poisoning two nights before. The Quarterdeck dinner
was in fact our first solid food in two days, and I am
happy to report that it stayed down.
 Saturday night saw a
burgers and hot dogs BBQ at the club (above), after
which we lounged in warm early evening sunshine.
Following that, USWA Commodore, Jim Heffernan, called
the USWA AGM to order, where we discussed means of
increasing our numbers, the need but lack of likelihood
of getting a North American Wayfarer builder, a dues
increase from the current $12, and approved the proposed
Class Rules and WIC Constitution changes.
 After that, some of us
joined the MC's around their RV village campfire
behind the club but still made it an early night,
being in bed at our hotel shortly after 10PM. Sunday
ended up being one of the oddest days in North
American Wayfarer racing history: Until noon, there
was little sign of raceable wind, so the disappointed
MC's packed it in and had their awards presentations,
after which the free beer began to flow - some of it
into Wayfarer sailors, as most of us were convinced
that there would be no more racing. As lunch was being
laid out, the aforementioned train derailment and a
building breeze soon saw us being sent out for two
more exciting races. And what a great series it ended
up being! All 14 teams started together, with the six
boats sailing solo or not using spinnakers racing for
the Midwinters trophy, and the other eight being
scored for the U.S. Nationals.
Thrilling U.S. Nationals Series Goes Right Down to the Wire Going into the final
race of this no-drop series, the leaders were tied.
Ottawa's Frank Goulay had teamed up very successfully
with Thunder Bay's Andrew Haill to score 4-1-1-2-1 in
W864 borrowed from Nick Seraphinoff of Detroit, while
the latter was again crewing for Oakville's Al
Schonborn who took 2-2-2-1-2 placings into the finale.
Both of these teams were well challenged by the other
teams: three quarters of our Nationals fleet was
seeded in the top quarter of the North American
Wayfarer rankings and no fewer than five of our eight
boats were past National champions!
In addition to the
highly skilled competition, the two leading crews
also had other challenges to meet: Frank was sailing
a borrowed boat with a pick-up crew, and he and
Andrew had very kindly given up their planned
Thursday of practice at the LESC to nurse Al and
Nick through a Wednesday-Thursday bout with food
poisoning in St. Petersburg. By Friday, the latter
had recovered, but Nick was still feeling the
effects of last summer's major back surgery,
especially in winds that regularly required him to
crouch down to leeward. Even in our 4th-race tacking
duel of 20+ tacks on the final leg, Nick never even
considered asking to slow the pace to ease the pain.
Great work, Nick - and thanks!
In the decisive final
race which, like all the others, was sailed on a
windward-leeward course, Al and Nick took a slight lead
early. Having still not discovered any predictable
pattern to the westerly winds coming across Lake Eustis,
Al and Nick were determined not to let Frank and Andrew
go off on their own and come back with the lead. So, we
matched tacks with grim determination, a strategy that
paid off as we pushed each other to excellent speed and
pointing, while slowly building an edge over the rest of
the fleet.
As we began the second
run (which would prove to be the final leg of a
shortened course), Al was leading Frank by perhaps four
boatlengths. Both leaders gybed to a very broad
port-tack reach almost immediately, and Al's lead
evaporated quickly as Frank brought a puff from astern
and sailed up into it until we were bow to bow. Now it
had become a nerve-wracking foot race to the finish
about half a mile away. Al continued to take every
opportunity to sail down with puffs while Frank kept
edging up towards ripples that were oh so slowly edging
closer from the left. Just to add a bit spice to the
situation, Montreal's Peter Rahn and son, Alex, rode a
puff of their own right up the middle between Frank and
Al. With a hundred yards to go, Al and Nick were about
one length clear of Frank and Andrew who were overlapped
with Peter and Alex. And that's way it ended, as for
once, no one got extra wind. Their clutch win allowed
Nick and Al to defend the Nationals title that they had
won - much more easily - last summer at Rock Hall. In
retrospect, we were pretty proud of ourselves. We could
so easily have lost this series.
 Perhaps the single most
significant difference-maker was our finish in Friday's
3rd race (above).
With Frank and Andrew already home and cooled out after
their second consecutive horizon-job victory, Andrew had
ample time to capture the developing close finish. With
no hope of crossing Peter (286) and Richard Johnson (to leeward and ahead of
Peter), we had pretty much resigned ourselves
to 4th place behind these two. Going across behind them
would only carve our 4th in stone, so we chose to leave
the door open for Lady Luck by tacking a couple of
lengths short of the lay line in hopes of a last-second
starboard lift. In the end, there was no lift and we
knew that would would soon have to tack and take our
medicine. But then Lady Luck poked her oh so lovely
upturned little nose in the door: Peter (above) was
making Richard wary enough that the latter was pinching
up to defend against Peter, and in doing so, he was
forgetting about us and sailing perhaps two lengths high
of the pin end of the mark. This meant that we in SHADES could tack
into that gap without fouling Richard (Rule 18.3).
So,
we got everything ready, threw in a quick roll tack to
port just short of the mark. Two lengths later, we
shoved SHADES' bow across the
line as part of a tack back to starboard while staying
just nicely clear of both Richard and the mark. Three
virtually simultaneous beeps came from the RC boat, and
we were pleased to later learn that we had edged out
Richard and Peter by about one foot - the difference
between series first and series second!!
A slightly less hairy
yet still significant hole that we managed to climb out
of came in the first Sunday race. Trying to leave no
preparation unmade, we switched to our fairly new (2004)
spinnaker from my favourite, the gift from Mike Mac
which had been no longer new, even in 1992. Things were
pretty close as we rounded the offset mark after the
first beat with Frank just off our bow and leading the
race. We were in a great attacking position and quickly
popped the chute - sort of! Our spiinnaker in fact went
up suspiciously quickly and I soon saw why: We had tied
it on sideways. By the time we got it re-tied, we had
fallen to 5th. Over the course of the rest of that race,
we managed to nibble away and rescue another 2nd by
remaining (relatively) poised. The way Frank and Andrew
were sailing so fast and mistake-free, we really needed
that 2nd, since we couldn't imagine Frank placing worse
than 2nd in the finale, and we knew that we would lose
any tie-breaker.
So we did end up
edging them out in the finale and in the series, but
it was by the slimmest of margins. Congratulations to
Frank and Andrew who sailed well enough to win most
series, and would have won this one, if there had been
a drop race. They made only one significant mistake,
but it was costly: they fouled James McIntyre at the
first windward mark in the first race. By the time
they had done their penalty turns, they never did
recover and finished 4th in a shortened race.
Series 3rd went to the defending Midwinters and former Nationals champions, Peter and Alex Rahn from Montreal. They scored a very consistent 3-4-4-3-3-3 and were very much in the hunt at all times. In the end, their inability to beat Frank and Al more often killed their hopes of a repeat win.  The "blind chicken" team from Charlotte, NC, Richard Johnson and his wife, Michele, began the Nationals with a very impressive first-place finish. Putting a new jib to fine use, Team Chicken demonstrated a lethal combination of amazing pointing and superb speed, as they scored their first Nationals race win ever. Richard and Michele maintained their speed and pointing throughout Friday's three races, but like the rest of us, ultimately found it hard to stay in synch with wind and shifts. Saturday and Sunday found them less speedy - a puzzling phenomenon, since conditions were similar and they could not pinpoint anything that they were doing differently. Nonetheless, Richard and Michele had enough to take 4th overall and the beautiful Designer's Trophy as the top U.S. boat. Having been seeded 7th in the 14-boat fleet, they beat their seed by three positions and were tied for Most Improved honours. Alas, poor Richard and Michele had to rush away without their loot, since they were facing a long drive home, and Richard had a flight to catch out of Charlotte very early Monday morning. Three points back, in series 5th was last year's Designer Trophy winner, Jim Heffernan with his wife, Linda, of Chapel Hill, NC. Jim and Linda, too, are on the honour roll as past U.S. Nationals winners (1979). As I recall it, Team Morning Star had their best moments on the runs, but never got very lucky in picking places to go on the beats. Making a long, relaxed
trip of it from London, Ontario in their RV were John
and Dolores de Boer and their lovable dogs, Cassie and
Callie. On their first night's stop in Lexington, KY,
the de Boers got a first-hand look at the ravages
wrought by a monster ice storm earlier that week. Nick
and I drove through the area as well. In the brilliant
sunshine, the ice coated trees looked startlingly
pretty, but we felt sorry for the poor souls who were
still without power days later. John and Dolores made
it through without incident, however. In the series,
the de Boers, who won the U.S. Nationals at Rock Hall
in 2007, took 6th place, losing a tie-breaker to the
Heffernans in the segregated
standings.
 Local Crew Captures Midwinters Fleet Title in Tie-Breaker Jim Lingeman (above right) and Charley Jensen of the host Lake Eustis SC roared back from a first-race 11th to win the Challengers Trophy as top finishers in the Midwinters Fleet (non-spinnaker), beating last year's non-spinnaker winner, Butch Minson (and his wife, Janice, in some races) on the tie-breaker rule in the segregated standings. It was a well-deserved win for Lingeman and Jensen, who beat the Minsons by a couple of points in the overall standings. At the awards, Jim - a long-time pillar of the Windmill Class - ironically credited tips from Butch, Sailing Coach at the Maine Maritime Academy, as being instrumental in helping him and Charley to score their impressive come-back win. 3rd place in the Midwinters Fleet went to LESC's James McIntyre with crew, Jim McIntyre (not related). The McIntyres were in the thick of their title hunt until the final race when the wheels fell off and they finished second to last in their fleet, a killer in this no-drop series. Following James and Jim in the standings was LESC Commodore, Dave Hepting, the only one to sail his entire series solo. According to Mike Murto's Most Improved system, Dave was the 2009 winner of that award in the Midwinters Fleet. That decision matched Uncle Al's statistics which had Dave seeded 13th but placing a much improved 10th in the overall fleet.  Only one point behind
Dave was our cruiser-turned-racer, Richard Watterson,
from Harrisburg, PA. Teaming up with fellow pilot,
Mark Nye, an experienced keelboat crew from Florida,
the virtual rookie to racing, Richard, was pretty
amazing as he knocked off three helms with
considerably more racing experience and without the
reef points on their mains. Having spent a day or two
in Mark's home waters at an undisclosed location on
the St. John River, rigging their boat for spinnaker
and doing a little practising, Richard and Mark did
not look at all out of place on the spinnaker legs (above). Well
done, Richard and Mark!
LESC's Ted Benedict combined with Mary Abel of North East, Maryland, to take 5th in the Midwinters Fleet (12th overall). Mary had planned to enjoy a warm weekend with Tony Krauss, her significant other, but an unfortunate work conflict forced a disgusted Tony to bail out on his much anticipated weekend flight down to Florida where he had planned to crew for Frank Goulay. We missed you, Tony!! Thumbs up for Mary who drove solo all the way down to Eustis - although she did manage to work out a convoy arrangement with the Heffernans for much of the trip down to the Midwinters. Two Ottawa skippers,
Paul Pineault and Andy Douma, cruised to 13th
overall in Andy's Mark III which, like Andy, winters
in Eustis where Andy has purchased a trailer home.
The Saturday wait for wind was not wasted time for
these two. After three straight last-place finishes
on Friday, Andy had lamented the fact that he had
been unable to point nearly as high as anyone else.
So a team of specialists that included Frank Goulay,
Peter Rahn, Jim Heffernan and Uncle Al - all past
U.S. champions - took their Saturday morning coffees
over to Andy's Port
Tack Too and examined the patient. After
much measuring and discussion, the patient was
deemed to be suffering from mast rake deficiency and
a bridle whose block was much too big (loud clunks
when it crashed onto the deck) and whose length was
excessive. These deficiencies were duly corrected,
and later that day, we were all very happy to see
Andy and Paul roll to a much improved 9th in the
day's only race.
The "After you, Alphonse" perfect host award went to LESC's Mike Murto as he and crew, Izak Kielmovitch, took the 14th and final place overall. Mike and Izak actually finished last in only one of the six races, but the 9th-seeded Mike just did not have one of his better series this year. Next year, right, guys??!! |