Thursday evening saw a bunch of Wayfarers taking our main hosts, Dotty and Mike Murto, out for dinner as usual. A very enjoyable time it was, too, even though the restaurant is now known as Fins rather than our old favourite, Dead River Vic's. I believe it was Mary Krauss who thought up a new possible way to get Uncle Al to eat his green stuff.

And here she is! Apparently not terminally offended by Uncle Al's I found Jesus ... He was behind the couch shirt.

Friday: A forecast of three breezy days and steadily dropping temperatures seemed to be coming true as Mary, Tony and I awoke after a fine night's rest at Mike and Dotty's. With Nick deciding to get hotel rooms for himself and his grand-daughter, Mallory, Al got to be chauffeured around by Tony and Mary for most of this weekend, and on Friday morning, that meant the first of three great breakfasts with these two - at the Mason Jar as usual.

At the club, we were greeted by - what else??? - a train wreck, whose functioning electric train delighted the many children in attendance - not to mention many of us older children!!

Two Wayfarer newcomers - Rick Nelson from Indianapolis (l) and Doug Terrier from Houston - look set to roll as the proceedings are about to begin. Or not, as the case may be. We did in fact, get a postponement while Dave Williams and his very efficient RC waited to see how the day's strong, gusty winds might develop. So we got to ...

... sit in on an MC seminar given by last year's MC winner, Andy Fox, who covered a wide variety of topics such as starting that were equally useful to both Wayfarers and MCs, Thanks, Andy!! After which ...

... our drinking buddy, Scott Tillema of the host club pitted his considerable substance against the still quite gusty winds (above) right out in front of the club dock and demonstrated breezy air techniques that ran the gamut from sailing the boat flat to ...

... self-rescue after a capsize. I found the demonstration to be most enlightening, especially since I have every intention of borrowing an MC for one of their regattas in the coming year or so.

At about noon, the RC left shore to set up for W racing in the conditions seen above. In many ways, this first series race of the 2010 Midwinters was a tale of errors made by the top two boats for sure, and very likely elsewhere down the fleet. Al and Nick started promisingly enough as they started even with Peter and Alex and proceeded to grind out a lead over over them. Meanwhile, teams Heffernan and Johnson slowly fell back into 3rd and 4th, likely hampered by their even greater lack of hiking weight.

About two thirds up the first beat came Al's first big mistake: Just prior to the start, Al had checked the SI's and would have sworn that that it said yellow marks would be used, with orange as replacements if needed. Thus, when we saw the yellow mark attached to the safety boat (above), we bore off significantly with a view to rounding it to port, just to play it safe. Of course, the crash boat occupants kindly informed us just before we rounded, that our rounding marks were orange. But by this time, we had given the lead to Peter and Alex.


Still, Nick and I again ground the Rahns down enough that when Peter tacked to leeward and ahead of us about 200 yards from the windward mark, he was unable to safely cross us and took our transom (above).


... wedged under the vang with the jib partly backed. I was so busy watching Nick's contortions that I failed to help our turn by easing the main, and we ended up just kissing the mark. While we were doing our Penalty Turn, Peter and Alex moved past us into the lead.

After the short reach to the offset mark, we began the first run. Instead of regaining the lead as we were fully expecting to do on the super-fast W864 bottom finish, our spinnaker work was enough of a comedy of errors that we even lost the spinnaker-less - on this first run - Jim and Linda Heffernan who had rounded a fairly close 3rd off the first beat.

But Peter and Alex, having pulled away nicely while Al and Nick sorted themselves out, were not about to let us hog all of the mistakes. No indeed: The Rahns rounded the leeward mark to starboard, and Nick and I let them sail a good 100 yards up the second beat before kindly informing them of their error.


On their way back, the Rahns (above left) failed to "unwind the string" before rounding to port, a foul that Al was quick to protest. Peter made some response but Al's ears were not up to the task in the fairly noisy wind. Certain that the Rahns would be DSQ, Al now concentrated only on beating Jim (above right) while ignoring Peter.

Al and Nick did indeed place ahead of Jim and Linda (above). And when the weather (above again) began to look ever more threatening, our RC abandoned further Friday racing to no one's great dismay! So now Al rushed to file his protest - his first in about ten years - and discovered he still has lots to learn: Even though to Al's mind, a Rahn DSQ was a dead certainty, Al should in retrospect have challenged Peter for the lead over the last three legs of the race instead of relying on the outcome of his protest.


Here is what happened: Al submitted a finely crafted - if I do say it myself - protest to the Protest Committee in plenty of time, and only then did he listen to Peter's rationale. It turns out that Peter thought we were - as the SI course diagram (above) showed - using a gate at the end of our downwind legs, and he rounded what he perceived to be the right-hand gate mark to starboard. Al pointed out that it did however say in the SI's: "there may be a gate". Technically speaking, Peter was in the wrong but I could easily see how such an understandable error could happen. In the never-ending "drop-race" debate, here is another reason why I like having a drop race: I was now faced with the question whether I wanted to be responsible for totally wrecking any Rahn chance at winning the series which would be the case if I got them DSQ'd. The answer was a pretty speedy and loud "no". The PC kindly let me withdraw my protest and Peter "bought" me a beer. The Wayfarer spirit in action. But as I said earlier, I should have challenged Peter and Alex on the race course in that first race, just in case that protest did not go as I oh so confidently expected.

In the Wayfarer Midwinters scheme of things, Friday night has become Quarterdeck night and this year, this was once again a great success before we went to sleep in our various billets, perhaps wondering how true the forecast of even cooler and windier weather was likely to be.

Saturday: As predicted, cooler (low 50s F), windier and increasingly sunny. After a short competitors' briefing - mostly for the MC's whose series was starting on this day - we were off into seriously challenging ...

... conditions. The top two seeds, Al and Peter, soon had the W race pretty much to themselves. Much to their surprise and delight, the two 68-year-olds, Nick and Al were able to grind down that young whippersnapper, Peter, and his strong young son, Alex, on each of the two beats and had a nice lead when a safety boat came by to let us know that the race had been abandoned because the ...

... the number of needed rescues was beginning to overtax the LESC capabilities. We were less than pleased but consoled ourselves that this was the only safe course of action and that with our on-board supply dwindling fast, we were now going to get at the free beer that much faster. Moreover, we reasoned, one hair-raising spinnaker-less dead run sailed mostly on a plane was enough excitement for us for one day.

And so we spent a nicely social afternoon under sunny skies but it only felt a bit warm if you could find a sunny spot that was protected from the wind.

Inside was another story, however. At one point in the early evening we had the promised, fine BBQ dinner whose preparations had to be moved indoors - a far cry from last year's marvellously hot sunshine!! Doing their absolute best to further MC - Wayfarer friendship in the most time-honoured way were Uncle Al and ...

... Dave Moring, the same Dave who got us many of our great action shots from Friday's first race of the Wayfarer series. Thanks, Dave. We did indeed set sail sail with Captain Morgan!!

In the Wayfarers' two Sunday races, there were no exciting developments as Peter and Alex nailed down first overall with a perfect 1-1-1 record, while Jim and Linda Heffernan beat their North Carolina state-mates, Richard Johnson and wife, Michele, by one place in each race to nail down the runner-up position.

Although the winds were not as strong as on Saturday, there still numerous challenging gusts as can be seen in the photo above. How nice it was to see that in these tough conditions, two of our newest helms scored fine 4th-place finishes: Rick Nelson (with Tony Krauss) in race #2 and Richard Watterson with Doug Terrier in the finale.

The very large, healthy fleet MC's put the leeward gate to good use (above).

The Wayfarer top three in the 2010 Midwinters: 1. Peter and Alex Rahn (black, red, yellow, white spi)   2. Jim and Linda Heffernan (red spi)   3. Richard Johnson and Michele Parish (pink, white & yellow spi) come down their final run with many MC's to be seen finishing their beats.

... Peter and Alex Rahn. In the Non-Spinnaker division, Richard Watterson and Doug Terrier's 4th in the finale fell just short of letting the catch Ted Benedict and Andy Douma who took top spot by one point ahead of Richard and Doug. Non-spi 3rd went to Rick Nelson with Tony Krauss. Well done, one and all!!

Mike Murto (l) presents our long-standing PRO, Dave Williams, with the Wayfarer tote bag created and donated by our covermaker par excellence, Hans Gottschling. Thanks, Dave, to you and all your many capable and friendly helpers!!

The occasion of our Midwinters awards was deemed by the Canadian Wayfarer Association to be a good time for Uncle Al to present two of our annual trophies to American sailors who could not attend our Annual Awards dinner in mid-January. Particularly apt was Nick Seraphinoff's acceptance of the Lansdown-O'Brien Spittoon (for unique feats of seamanship during the past year) since it had been right here on Lake Eustis a year before that Nick had hoisted the W3854 spinnaker sideways in the heat of US Nationals battle. You can see Nick oozing gratitude from every pore on the left above.

It was the CWA's top honour, the Don Davis Memorial Trophy (for exceptional service to the Wayfarer Class in North America over the years) that was presented to Jim and Linda Heffernan. Jim is currently the USWA Commodore again after holding that position 30 years ago. Also a case of déjà vu is ...