North Bay Wayfarer Revival a Smash Hit!

14 Wayfarer teams had a marvellous weekend July 1 - 4 at the North Bay YC on Callander Bay and on Trout Lake. Dave and Carol Hansman showed us what energetic enthusiasm can accomplish, as their dream of reviving the North Bay Wayfarer Weekend became a magnificent reality. Seven local Wayfarers were joined by a similar number of visiting boats from as far away as Fredericton, New Brunswick and Thunder Bay. Four separate events were scheduled for the four days: on Friday, the W's were invited to join in the North Bay YC's annual 12-mile Canada Day Race from the government dock in North Bay back to the North Bay YC on Callander Bay; Saturday brought our National Cruise Race, followed on the Sunday by a revival of the Don Rumble Memorial series, and, to cap it all off, a Monday Poker Race zig-zagged us down of our loveliest Wayfarer memory lanes, Trout Lake, the scene of the most popular event in North American Wayfarer history, the Trout Lake Wayfarer Weekend that was hosted for nearly 30 years by the McNutt family.

The Canada Day Race ended up giving us Wayfarers a chance to relax when a cold front with lots of cool clouds and wind gusting to over 30 knots from the west, caused us to forego the pleasure of sailing this event until next year. Instead, we lounging and dawdled around in the beautiful North Bay area, and eventually admired the keelboats as they fought the elements to reach the finish line (photo below). The evening eventually finished off with a fine pizza supper and an early, restful night.

The Cruise Race

Dreams of warmer weather and lighter winds (but not too light!!!) came true on Saturday morning. Fortified by a lovely breakfast provided upstairs in the club by Bill Simkins and his wife, ???, we set off in brilliant, warm sunshine and WNW winds of 10 - 15 knots for the 37th annual National Cruise Race around 1030 hrs from a start line in the mouth of the sheltered cove that shelters the NBYC's member boats (see course chart below - red arrows indicate shortened course that would have kept us inside Callander Bay, if necessary).

This line gave spectators on shore a close-up view of the action as NBYC's own Dave and Carol Hansman, and Geoff Edwards with his young local crew, Matt Close, cleverly positioned themselves at the very starboard end of the shore-based line where they were the first to be able to tack around Burfort Point (see photo below) onto the close port-tack reach towards NBYC club mark #1,  our first turning mark.

Aboard SHADES, Marc Bennett had the helm for this race with Uncle Al as crew. From our early 3rd-place position, we were able to admire how well crews, Matt and Carol were hiking to keep their leading boats flat and fast. Marc and I were also keeping a close eye on defending champions, Dwight and Pat Aplevich, as well as John and Dolores de Boer, perennial long distance race threats,  who were nipping at our heels. Harder to keep track of were were two other expected contenders: Doug Netherton with Françoise Brossard of the Lac Deschênes SC in Ottawa, who thrive in the windier going, and Sue Pilling, an excellent former Mirror dinghy racer who now lives in North Bay and was introducing Stephen Romaniuk to the joys of Wayfarer crewing. Both of these teams donated a lot of time by holding starboard tack off the line for several minutes, all of which turned out to be wasted distance. 

Apart from those who sailed too long on starboard, the fleet was a closely bunched group at #1 where we began a westerly beat towards mark #6. On this leg, the NBYC club boats' lack of sophisticated racing rig and aged, blown out sails made itself felt quickly. Meanwhile, Marc and Al used their 42:1 vang to good effect in the gusting winds while playing shifts with a veteran eye. They were soon holding a lead that they would not relinquish. Not doing so well was John de Boer who discovered that his new  jib halyard was too long to provide adequate rig tension on the beat.

The leader, Marc, was pursued onto the ensuing starboard tack close reach by Dwight as the fleet prepared to leave Darling and McPherson Islands to port, and Smith Island to starboard, on its way into the Main Channel which would let us beat out into Lake Nipissing. To conserve our strength on this long beat to the green J5 mark several miles away along the south shore of the lake, Marc and Al shared the mainsheet playing duties while discussing strategy, speed, pointing, and the need to avoid possible shoals in Lake Nipissing's very shallow waters. We duly noted that Dwight was pointing higher and sailing flatter by pinching and luffing slightly, whereas Marc attacked the waves by footing and keeping a touch more speed. This latter approach seemed to give us some slight gains, although these may also have been due to Dwight's Eclairelle running aground in the middle of nowhere on at least one occasion.

Our upwind slogging was rewarded at last as we rounded J5 (above, far left) onto a glorious spinnaker run all the way back to the North Bay YC where we had started. Early in the run, we got lots of surfing and the occasional plane on the warm waves of Lake Nipissing. We had enough wind for excitement but not so much as to make people overly nervous, and our spinnaker-studded fleet was a lovely sight in the summer sunshine.

With only the need to leave NBYC marks 4 and 3 in Callander Bay to port, Marc Bennett of Toronto's Alexandra YC had little trouble scoring his first National Cruise Race win as a helm, crossing the finish line with a reasonably comfortable edge over defending champs, Dwight and Pat Aplevich of the Conestoga SC. After making his donation early in the race, Doug Netherton recovered to edge out our first-leg leaders, Geoff Edwards (TSCC) with Matt Close for 3rd place. John and Dolores de Boer were next in 5th. Congratulations to Sue Pilling who coaxed a 6th out of a "club boat" and edged out North Bay YC clubmate, Dave Hansman, for NBYC fleet bragging rights.

Thunder Bay's Andrew Haill with Julie Colbourn outduelled TSCC's Fred Black with Michael Kachkovsky for 8th place, while the only stainless steel centreboard in Wayfarer captivity, attached to Felicia (W3593) took 10th in the hands of North Bay's Henry Van Brussel and Bernie Tempelmans Plat. A water-logged, spinnaker-less team of Ross Jamieson and his son, Brett, limped home 11th, having discovered a number of flaws in their racing set-up, such as forward mast rake, a rudder blade angled well aft, and a wobbly centreboard box.

The latter resulted in a very early Sunday morning for Ross, as he and Marc Bennett (above) were up by 6 a.m. and working hard to get these shortcomings (reasonably well) corrected in time for Sunday's Don Rumble Memorial series.

But first, we had our Saturday night social to contend with: a dinner outing to Average Joe's (above) where we dined in style on the lovely upper deck while looking east along the entire length of Trout Lake.

For Al and his wife, Julia, this vista brought back many cherished recollections of Cruise Races where, for nearly 30 years,  we regularly beat from a start near Fred and Anne's McNutt's cottage to a windward mark five miles away, just below the very spot where we were now sitting in the fine company of another group of Wayfarers, both old and new. A star of the evening was Ross Jamieson's wife, Lori, who ran several shuttle van trips between the yacht club and the restaurant so that the rest of us would not need to worry about driving if we were imbibing. Thanks a million, Lori!

Sunday arrived with brilliant, warm sunshine and lovely SW winds of 6 to 12 knots which, as the day warmed up, began to gust to over 15 knots - a perfect day for our first Don Rumble Memorial series since 1996. Appropriately enough, our committee included Don Rumble's daughters: Anne McNutt and Gillian Danby, with the latter doing great photography with the CWA digital camera. PRO, Fred McNutt, wasted no time getting our five-race series underway shortly after 10 a.m. on courses that would alternate between windward-leewards and Olympic triangles. By now, our fleet had grown to 12 boats with the Saturday arrival of Kevin Pegler and family from Fredericton, New Brunswick, who were lucky to even reach North Bay after one of their trailer springs gave way early in their long trip.

Kevin sailed his lovely, wooden Wildwood with daughter, Stephanie (8) (above) for whom the gusty, shifty winds coming off the lands provided a very challenging debut. Still, it was all going well until the collision after race 2. Wildwood lost about a foot of rubrail when neither Kevin nor Ross Jamieson saw the other coming: there was a big crunch and a shaken Kevin and Stephanie retired for the day.

In the racing, conditions suited Uncle Al who was back at the helm and who loves those oscillating shifts off the shore. After getting away with a couple of questionable early-race moves to the far left of the beat but still pulling out wins in races 1 and 2, Al and Marc (closest to camera above) grabbed their spot early and got the RC boat end starts they wanted in races 3 and 4. These starts left them with the freedom to tack at will on any shift that might come along. They used this wisely and led from start to finish in both races, winning the Don Rumble Memorial Trophy with a race to spare. Since Marc was due back at work in Toronto on Monday morning, SHADES was given race 5 off, and we missed the excitement as a two-boat battle went right down to the finish line where John and Dolores de Boer of London, Ontario just edged out Doug Netherton and Françoise Brossard in a virtual photo finish.

That final-race first left John and Dolores just one point behind Dwight and Pat Aplevich who took series second. Meanwhile, losing by an inch to John cost Doug series 3rd: had he beaten John in the finale, both he and John would have had 11 points and Doug would have won the tie-breaker. Close, exciting stuff!! North Bay's Sue Pilling and Stephan Romaniuk took 5th overall, holding off a late charge by TSCC's Geoff Edwards and local crew,  Matt Close, who scored a fine 3rd in the last race. Next in the standings were three crews separated by a mere one point. In the end, it was the 11th-seeded Andrew Haill with Julie Colbourn of the Temple Reef SC in Thunder Bay who took series 7th by that single point over TSCC's Fred Black and Michael Kachkovsky and NBYC's Dave and Carol Hansman.  Both Dave and Fred scored 7-7-8-9 finishes but Fred got the tie-breaker by beating Dave in the last race. Andrew and Julie were also our Most Improved team, beating their seed by an impressive four spots in the 12-boat fleet. Not far back of this trio in 10th were Henry Van Brussel and Bernie Tempelmans Plat of North Bay, while 11th and 12th went to crews who had assorted boat problems: North Bay's Ross Jamieson and his son, Brett, and Fredericton's Kevin Pegler with young Stephanie as crew. Assorted fun awards were sprinkled in amid the flags and trophies and we all had a fine time as the afternoon wound down with a happy awards ceremony.

Fogh Marine  http://www.foghmarine.com

Power Sports and Marine (North Bay)  http://www.powersportsmarine.com/

The Redpath Group  http://www.jsredpath.com/

Saturn of North Bay  http://www.saturnofnorthbay.saturncanada.com/weblogic/gwn/dws/InternetRTRApps.AboutUs?dealer=98550&lang=en

Saturn of North Bay also provided the courtesy shuttle; much appreciated by those who took advantage.
Autohaus Stackelberg Inc. http://www.vw.ca

Those of us not committed to an early departure could now totally relax. Most of us did so by going into the town of Callander and having a lovely dinner at the Ram's Head Restaurant on Callander Bay where we had lots of time to chat and rehash the weekend's exciting and enjoyable sailing. And even the following day's much anticipated return to Trout Lake and our first-ever Poker Race was given due attention.

Monday morning, 8 Wayfarer teams - including two crews making their first appearance of the weekend - arrived at Bob Brown's hangar on Trout Lake's Delaney Bay (above) for a 0930 competitors' briefing prior to the Wayfarers' first ever Poker Race.

Here we discovered that we were to zigzag down much of the length of Trout Lake, picking up a package containing a pair of playing cards at each of five waypoints (see chart above). Thus we would end up with enough cards to make up two poker hands. Each of our hands would be ranked in its "pool", leaving us with three scores (two hands plus one race), lowest total wins, like in a race series. After a beaching finish at the McNutts' cottage, we would all be winners, getting a delicious BBQ lunch while wallowing in the nostalgia of the "good old days" of the Wayfarer Weekend at Trout Lake.

Getting to the first waypoint involved a slow beat of about half a mile into a fitful southwesterly that was just beginning to stir for the day (see photo above).

The first to reach the wind arriving more or less from the SW were Fred Black with Michele Dicker (Dolores de Boer's daughter) in W7379 Rusty Scuppers, one of our new entries: W3567 The Brown Bomber sailed by Ken Brown and his son, Graeme, and W1366 Toodle-oo with Doug Netherton and Françoise Brossard.

At waypoint #1, we found long-time W851, Ken Holloway and his daughter, Lesley, in their canoe where Ken was ready to hand over his packages on a long stick that would - he hoped - keep any Wayfarer-canoe collisions hypothetical. The team of Al Schonborn and his wife, Julia, was back in action here for the first time in well over 10 years, and were immediately faced with the challenge of making up for a late start. It was a classic Trout Lake drifter to start with. Conditions were perhaps best exemplified by an early moment in which Julia and I were drifting along beside Dave and Carol Hansman and their grandson, Mitchell Martyn.  Julia and I got a tiny puff and sailed away for a few hundred yards before Dave finally also got a bit of breeze.

Meanwhile, Fred Black and Ken Brown had gone left early towards the south shore early where they reached the breeze arriving from the SW first. Cruising past Ken for an easy #1 pick-up, these two retained the wind and were soon gurgling off to a huge lead over Doug Netherton who in turn was a few hundred yards ahead of Uncle Al. But this was Trout Lake, and we knew from long and often painful experience that anything could still happen. In a fitfully increasing SW breeze, the next leg was to Pilot Point (see chart above) where we would head south into Dugas Bay for pick-up #2. To help fight the urge to cut too close to the windward shore, Al tried a close spinnaker reach and began to make up some ground on the three leaders who, on average, got less wind by taking the short-cut nearer the shore.

Going around Pilot Point, Doug and Al were bow to bow with the wily Uncle Al eventually moving past Doug by sailing a longer course but staying further off the wind-blocking shore. As we skimmed past Murdoch Island on a close reach, Julia and I were reminded of the many times that this island had been an exciting rounding "mark" of the Cruise Race in a fleet of 30+ Wayfarers. By now, the leaders were distinguishable as Fred and Ken and we could see them struggling through dead spots to reach the pick-up at the end of a short dock right under a tree-lined windward shore. Learning from their experience, Al overlaid the "mark" and approached on port tack where the shore was further away and flatter on the approach. This allowed us to do a crisp U-turn, make the pick-up with board and rudder up for shallow water, and still have enough momentum to drift back into the wind blowing nicely across the lower shoreline just east of the dock - a manoeuvre that earned us applause.

With Ken still stuck in the doldrums under the trees, SHADES was now off in pursuit of Fred. The next leg was a spinnaker run NE across the lake route to pick-up #3 near the mouth of Lounsbury Bay. Since the direct route would take us across the considerable bulk of Hemlock Island,, a decision had to be made which way to pass it.  Fred chose the west side while Al, for old times' sake, chose the way we used to get sent after rounding Murdoch Island on the Cruise Race: between Hemlock and Poplar Islands. By the time the two leaders converged after Hemlock, it was a close race, with Fred leading by a mere 50 yards and sailing a bit high of where we thought the pick-up point should be. So we gybed to port and edged nearer the north shore, keeping our eyes peeled for the paddle boat in which Dave Hansman's daughter would be waiting with package #3. We had moved past Fred after gybing but could still not see any paddle boat as we got ever closer to the mouth of Lounsbury Bay. At last we spotted a young lady, standing waist-deep in water about 200 yards off shore and holding a baby in one arm. She was waving to us. A shout confirmed that she was indeed pick-up point #3. Between making our pick-up, dousing the spi and gybing before we got too close to the fairly steep lee shore and/or running aground, we were unable to snap a usable picture - too bad, because it would have been a classic!

Now our course was set for the infamous Garbage Island, directly south of pick-up #3, where would would head east towards pick-up #4, to be made from a blue motor boat in Milnes Bay. The sail to Garbage Is. was a close reach into a SW breeze that was by now a fairly steady 6 to 8 knots. True to the nostalgic spirit of the day, we chose to go between Garbage Island and the mainland, to re-risk the countless frustrating windless moments from the 60's, 70's and 80's. As we had learned from these occasions, it was best to go through about 2/3 of the way towards the lee shore where the wind shadow of Garbage Is. would - we hoped - be minimized. Julia was again at her best here, as we coaxed maximum speed out of SHADES before entering "the twilight zone". Thus, our momentum and frequent sail trim carried us through the danger area with relatively little speed damage.

Soon we were leaving Garbage Island behind (a view - above - enjoyed shortly thereafter by young Mitchell who was steering Banshee), spinnakering well out into the lake to avoid the loss of pressure nearer the shore where the wind angling onto the shore would tend to lift up in anticipation of having to climb the hills. There was a moment of nervousness when we passed the blue boat that had been ID'd as the source of package #4, going the other way. But it turned out that they were just taking a few pictures before returning to their assigned post in Milnes Bay.

The only SHADES screw-up occurred as we passed this pick-up - perhaps going a tad too fast. As we zipped past to leeward of the blue boat (see photo above where Fred and Michele are about to make their pick-up) and the fishing net containing our "prize" being held out to us, I (urgently) reminded Julia to "Grab it!" Julia did - only she thought I had meant the spi sheet flogging to leeward. Oops! We quickly luffed head to wind under spinnaker, and in her laudably enthusiastic competitive spirit, Julia grabbed the whole net. The pick-up crew kindly motored over to us to retrieve the net - much better service than you get from your ordinary mark!!!

We refilled the spinnaker and we now off on a nice reach to pick up our final package from Jack Wallace at the end of his dock, about half a mile further along the north shore. An early spi douse seemed called for as we entered shallow water towards the only guy standing at the end of a dock in the general vicinity (see photo above). This was a tricky pick-up since we had to gybe, do a windward side pick-up, then gybe again quickly before we ran aground completely!

But after that it was clear sailing: the old familiar starboard close reach leaving Rolph Island to port and Falconbridge Island to starboard as we sailed to a finish horn from John de Boer and hit the long awaited McNutt beach (above). After a trip to the McNutt kitchen for liquid refreshments, we opened our card packs to see what Lady Luck had brought us.  While BBQ chef, Fred McNutt and sous-chef, John de Boer, were busy with delicious burgers and sausages, the rest of us talked and re-lived the glory days of the Wayfarer Weekend on Trout Lake with the help of copious clippings from the McNutt scrap book, before settling in to a wonderful lunch. When Dave Hansman finally revealed the results of our first Poker Race, Al and Julia's hot streak continued as they edged out Fred and Michele by a single point for the top prize of a lovely compact tote bag embroidered with the winged W.

Long-time Trout Lake W stalwarts, Grace Chapman (who had hoped to sail with George Blanchard one more time but George's health would not permit the trip) and Ken Holloway were taken for a Wayfarer sail. But it had to be a quick one since the skies were beginning to cloud over as a prelude to the forecast afternoon rain and we were facing a long beat back to our launch area in winds that were already weakening. So we sadly bid our re-discovered friends "au revoir" til next year.

An hour later, the winds completely gave up the ghost, and we once again had cause to be grateful to Dave and Carol Hansman's great organizational skills: two tow boats had been laid on and they got us back just in time to miss the worst of the rain.

And we even had time for one last group shot. All in all, this was a unique and joyous experience that left us eager to repeat it in 2006!! Our heartfelt thanks to the many North Bay sailors who made  this magnificent weekend possible for us!