This year, the Poker "fun" Event on Trout Lake capped off a spectacular four days of beautiful (sometimes more than plentiful) wind and weather. Survivors of the Don Rumble Memorial series on Saturday and the food, drinks and smoozing of the "gala" dinner held the previous evening at the NBYC club house, gathered by 9:30 am at the new starting venue of Armstrong Beach Park at the head of Trout Lake.

By 10 am it was already 22°C and there was a 3- to 4-knot SW breeze coming in onto the bay from the west.  For the first time in the 6 years this event has been running, all the boats were ready to go by 10:30 and eagerly awaiting their start.  This year featured 7 boats including a very welcomed Grigg family and their recently acquired Y-Knot. The premise of the event: Boats leave at 2-minute intervals, sail to 5 locations on Trout Lake, pick up 2 playing cards at each location, then proceed to McNutt's cottage for lunch. 

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The order of arrival at McNutt's counts for 1/3 of the score, and each of the two poker hands count for 1/3 of the score.  Some penalties or handicaps may be applicable (more on this later). Since the timed start favours, for a short while, the higher seeded (or non-seeded) boats, Y-Knot was given the pole position, followed 2 minutes later by Andy Douma and Robin Allardyce in Port Tack Too.  Eventually, on the same 2-minute interval, the remaining five boats departed, Uncle Al and Julia in SHADES being the boat to start last of all, 12 minutes after the Grigg family.

On duty at Waypoint 1: Erinn Hansman and daughter, Kennedy, as W3854 passes by

The gentle wind was starting to freshen from behind, something that gave the later boats a boost as they quickly started to close with the lead boats - especially as a few of the boats chose to use their "kites" in the first leg.  Getting to the "Ice Cream" dock at the Green Store (Waypoint 1) first were Dave and Carol in Banshee.  Here, the waypoint was being "manned" by Erinn Hansman and her 10 year old daughter, Kennedy.  The first 4 boats arrived very closely packed, making life exciting when handing out the cards.

Onward to Waypoint 2 with the breeze picking up slightly.  There, our old Wayfaring friend and racer, Ken Holloway, 84 years old, and his daughter Yvonne were, the same as each time in the past, sitting in his canoe and expecting everyone to "round to port" for their pickup. Dave and Carol in Windshaker were first to the Waypoint again but they could see that their margin of comfort from behind was not what it was.  Ross and John in Silver Fox were picking up the pace, followed closely by Dave and Kim in Born Loser.  At that stage, up went the spinnakers again for those that could. 

With the chute down, the remaining part of the leg to Waypoint 3 was sailed close-hauled due south against the increasing breeze (now 7 to 10 knots) from the south-west.  But of the Grigg boat?  Ah-ha, there they are (below, right), coming back from Pilot Point (below; Al's note: they said someone on Y-knot needed to go back to answer a call of nature) - everyone still accounted for.

The other six boats were now snapping at each other heels; it was anyone's race. Once again, the spinnakers were up and the SW wind provided the perfect direction to allow the Wayfarers to carry the chutes all the way to #4, sailing around and through the islands and giving the local cottagers a real show.  Even the sandbar off the east end of Hemlock Island did not prove to be a problem.

Waypoint 4 was located at the mouth of Lonsberry (One Mile) Bay and manned, once again this year, by another old Wayfaring friend, Joel Truckenbrodt (who had helmed for Uncle Al for the Canada Day race three days previously). 

At this point, Dave and Carol were still nominally in the lead but had to exercise overlap rights over Sue and Steph who had started 2nd last but nevertheless had just appeared out of nowhere in Chich. (Al's note: This is a tricky Rules situation. Overlap rights won't come into play here and that is part of the fun of this race which leaves it to us to choose the best approach to and get-away from the various Waypoints. Rule 18 says "18.1 When Rule 18 Applies  Rule 18 applies between boats when they are required to leave a mark on the same side ..." Thus, rule 18 does not apply because we are not required to leave the mark on any particular side. So it goes back to basics, and here, Sue has r-o-w under Rule 11 (leeward boat) and can cut windward off and make her leave the motor boat to starboard. Of course, all this is tempered by safety concerns and we need to think ahead to prevent accident or injury. Here, it might pay Dave live and let live by planning to leave the boat to starboard: drop the chute, gybe and thus avoid guillotining Joel in the waypoint boat as he passes. Joel for his part will have to be very fast to pass one packet to each side in a split second if both boats are still dead even - as someone once did for John de Boer and me at the Milne Bay waypoint where we passed one one each side of his boat at the same time.)

Now, with chutes down and on a reach to Garbage Island, the wind had now risen to about 10 knots. Catch the right wind and the trip to Waypoint 5 would be thrilling, which it was.


However, it was behind Garbage Island (appropriately named for what it does to the wind, not a testament to how it looks) that Dave and Carol discovered they had a twist in their spinnaker - see photo above. As that little surprise was being sorted out, they were passed, first by Sue and Steph, then by Ross and John and, finally, by Al and Julia.  I am sure they all had heartfelt sympathy for Dave and Carol (not!).  Finally, with spinnaker sorted out, Dave and Carol followed closely as the lead Ws were able to enjoy some moments of "planing pleasure" on the eastward trip to Waypoint 5. 

Waypoint 5 proved to be quite interesting.  With five boats descending upon him very quickly, Terry Alderson (in his party boat, anchored, above) was ready but, as it turns out, not ready for everything.  Sue and Steph were there with about 30 seconds of breathing space.  However, Al and Julia SHADES were nip'n tuck with Ross and John in Silver Fox, Dave and Carol Windshaker right behind them and with Dave and Kim in Born Loser within striking distance - all coming at speed.

Here, the writer digresses to go back to discussing the evolving rules for this fun event.  To date, we have only had a few basic rules.  The first rule, called the "Uncle Al" rule, was brought into play after the first year of the event when Uncle Al was not only the first boat across the line but also had the two best poker hands!!  So the Uncle Al rule brought in a handicap system for scoring - if you win one year, you suffer and points handicap the following year equal to the number of boats entered that year.  This was further refined the following year to make it such that you carry half the handicap in the 2nd year after winning.  This has proven to work quite well. BUT, an incident at Waypoint 5 that was about to occur has brought about not only our first "protest" in Poker Event history, but also was the basis of a new rule - the "Aggressive Crew Rule", also now known as the "Julia Rule". 


Now, back to the race….. Terry handed off to Sue and Steph and they proceeded on a reach south-south-east toward Rolph Island.  With them on their way, Terry reloaded stick (he was clipping the cards to the stick for handoff to the Ws as they passed).  Al and Julia were approaching fast, Ross and John were right behind, Julia reaches for the cards - and takes both the card and the stick.  Terry scrambles, nothing to use to pass the cards to John, Ross and John sail by - no cards available - they pass the boat and are now downwind and have to work their way back.  Al and Julia get the stick back to Terry, Dave and Carol are handed their cards, Dave and Kim get their cards, Andy and Robin get their cards.  Finally, Ross and John get their cards, now in 6th place instead of 3rd place.  Dave and Carol feel as badly for them as, we are sure, when Ross and John did when they passed Dave and Carol with the twisted spinnaker. But where is the Grigg family in Y-knot?  Six of the seven boats are close to each other, the Griggs are nowhere to be seen.


But now we have a great wind to contend with in the final, upwind leg of the journey to McNutt's cottage and lunch.  Travelling up past Rolph Island and in behind Falconbridge Island, the +10 knot wind with gusts to +15 knots provided plenty of shifts, lifts and headers - see photo of Ross and John above. No two boats had the same wind at the same time. 


Sue and Steph in Chich finished first across the line (the end of McNutt's dock, above) followed closely by Uncle Al and Julia in SHADES.  Dave and Kim in Born Loser took advantage of the shifts and nearly knocked off Dave and Carol in Windshaker for 3rd place.  Andy and Robin in Port Tack Too sidled across 5th despite not having flown and spinnaker, leaving 6th across the line for Ross and John.


Quickly, the cold beers were opened and Uncle Al (above) got out the Dark & Stormy "makings".  While teams started to assess their poker hand chances, Dave Hansman was asked by hostess, Anne McNutt, to take out her 12-year-old grandson (and great grandson of former CWA Honourary Commodore Don Rumble), Cameron Daniels, for his first Wayfarer experience. 


Of course, any young person interested in a Wayfarer ride MUST be accommodated and so, after a brief orientation, off they went to play in the winds between Falconbridge Island and the beach at the cottage.  No problem for Cameron, he was "into it" very quickly and soon found himself on the rail and hiking. As it turns out, our being on the water at this time was excellent timing for the Grigg family who were well behind the pack after their early bathroom break. 


Being late, they had missed Waypoint 4 and while they were proceeding to Waypoint 5 they spotted Windshaker playing in behind the island by McNutt's (above).  Cutting short their trip to Waypoint 5, Y-Knot made a beeline for McNutt's now that they had W2178's sail to mark the location. 


Arriving to the applause of the rest of the group, Grigg skipper and crewmates were all smiles - this, we found out, had been their maiden voyage in their Wayfarer; so much more to learn and enjoy.  Although they had missed two Waypoints, a random draw of 4 cards from the deck put them back into the Poker game.

Host Fred had the barbeque all fired up, a great spread of salads and other goodies were laid out on the table for consumption.  The drinks were flowing and RC Dave headed to the quiet of the cottage to organize the poker hands into the primary and secondary hands provided by the teams.  Dave Richardson stood in as auditor on the poker hand assessment - it was total coincidence that his primary hand was the best hand of the day (four queens).

However, sorting out the poker hands was the easy part; as mentioned earlier, we had a protest on our hands arising from the shenanigans at Waypoint 5.  The crews of the two boats (Silver Fox and Shades) were interviewed, their skippers being too engrossed in Dark & Stormies by this time (although it should be noted that Uncle Al had delivered a Dark & Stormy to the RC only a few minutes prior, something that helped the subsequent protest deliberations. After listening to both sides of the story from the crew members (Skippers engaged elsewhere in the festivities), complete with the admission by Julia and she had, indeed, been overly zealous in her action of retrieving the cards along with the Terry's stick at Waypoint 5 and thereby made it impossible for the following boat to get their cards in proper sequence.  A DSQ is certainly not "in the cards" for the poker event, so the omnipotent one man RC decided that a new rule (the " Aggressive Crew Rule", henceforth to be known as the "Julia Rule" ) was needed for the situation to allow redress and/or penalty as the situation "demanded". 

In this case, it became simple - Silver Fox was given a "credit" of three points, effectively restoring them to third place, the three following boats were each added a point to effectively drop them one position in the on water portion (as if Silver Fox carried on in 3rd  from Waypoint 5).  Shades was penalized 3 points under the new rule, but this was subsequently reduced to a 2-point penalty when the RC remembered that it had been the skipper of Shades that had so promptly brought him a Dark & Stormy on arrival.


The barbequed hamburgers and the rest of the lunch served up by Anne and Fred were fantastic as usual.  The sun and warm temperatures provided a thoroughly enjoyable experience on the deck and front porch of the McNutt cottage.  The awards were handed out:


Special mention must also be made of the brightly coloured Wayfarer shirts that the Grigg family was wearing.  The lettering was done by Heather Grigg - obviously a very limited edition for Y-Knot.  We look forward to seeing Y-Knot and her crew at future Wayfarer events. By 3 pm, things were winding down at McNutts' and it was time to sail our way back to Armstrong beach.  The partings from the cottage were somewhat staggered, depending on the state of play in finishing up one last beer or Dark & Stormy, but the sail back to the head of the lake proved to be a fantastic 7-mile trip that, due to the +10 knot SW wind, was possible in one long, close hauled reach sailed in only one hour. A perfect finish to a nearly perfect four days of sailing!

Unable to tear themselves away from the McNutts, Al and Julia were the last to arrive back at Armstrong Beach,
where our consummate event host, Dave Hansman, was still waiting for us and ready for one last gentlemanly task.