(190626)  Both Parry Sound's Sue Pilling and Steph Romaniuk (W397) and East Lansing, Michigan's Marc Bennett and Julie Seraphinoff (W11221) ended this year's Wayfarer Ontario Championships with 15 points after an eight-race series contested in warm sunshine and often tricky medium winds on Lake Ontario just south of Toronto's Ward's Island. Having scored more firsts (three to two) than Sue and Steph, Marc and Julie won this year's title. Also worth noting was the arrival of the 2019 Most Improved awards, and the fact that by winning the long-awaited race 8, Kit Wallace and George Waller (seeded 8th) moved past Uncle Al and Keith Dyke into series 6th and were this event's Most Improved. Aboard SHADES a.k.a. Glory Days, Keith helmed two races, scoring our worst and our best results, 10th and 3rd.


Weather conditions were an odd mix: the relatively waveless water (above) provided perfect medium-air boat-speed testing weather in winds that seemed to be fairly steady in both strength and direction and that made it easy for all the boats to be sailed at top speed. Yet there were areas of better pressure. And did I mention a number of permanent shifts? These meant that, in the strong fleet (eight of ten entries seeded in the top third) of boats being well sailed (nine of ten with at least one top-four finish), it was unusually difficult to regain lost ground.






The event was a logistical minefield, what with the host Royal Canadian YC being located on Toronto Island - see earlier map. Fortunately, the Outer Harbour Centreboard Club (above) helped out by letting the Wayfarers use Outer Harbour as our base of operations. We were also fortunate to have John O'Dwyer as our Race Officer on a course the we shared with the Albacores (below). All in all the two days of sailing were a lot of fun.