2008 Wayfarer season comes to exciting end at Fanshawe's Pumpkin Regatta

Cool but very pleasant weather blessed the 41st annual Pumpkin Regatta held Oct. 4-5 at London's Fanshawe YC. About 40 boats - mostly Wayfarers, Lasers and Y-Flyers - enjoyed six races in light to medium airs (see photo by Bob Steer above) and temperatures around 15C under somewhat sunny skies.  An added bonus for us again this year, was the (apparently) annual re-enactment of one of the battles of the War of 1812, and we shared the waters of Fanshawe Lake with some most interesting craft. Special Wayfarer thanks to John and Dolores de Boer who again hosted their by now traditional Friday night Wayfarer pre-Pumpkin dinner party to get the festivities underway in the finest possible manner.


Like last year, we got six races in: three on Saturday and three on Sunday. Despite the best efforts of our hard-working but land-based (above) Race Committee, our starts were always an adventure, with shifts often making it impossible to cross the line on starboard tack.

In the 10-boat W fleet, Al Schonborn of Oakville maintained his stranglehold on the George Blanchard Red Top Trophy, with his wife, Julia (above), doing an excellent emergency crewing job after being pressed into service when Al's intended crew, Dave Hansman, was called away on mining business to Mongolia at the last minute. A sparkling 1-3-1-1-1 record over the first five races allowed Al to let Julia rest her weary bones without having to sail the finale.

In contrast, the fight for series 2nd and 3rd went right down to the end of the final race, in which Fanshawe's Jens Biskaborn and his wife, Sharon, scored a close 3rd-place finish that was just enough to take the runner-up spot by just a single point. Like Uncle Al and Julia, the Biskaborns (who were sailing the Wayfarer because Jens had broken his Laser mast a few days previously) were models of consistency. In the typical shifty Fanshawe winds, they  scored 3-2-4-3-3, not an easy thing to accomplish in our very evenly matched fleet, in which one shift or dead spot could easily drop you several places. By beating their seed by two places, Sharon and Jens grabbed a share of Most Improved honours for the 2008 Pumpkin Regatta. Well done, Jens and Sharon!

A mere point further back were two more "mixed" teams. By virtue of their fine first-place finish in race 2, Dwight and Pat Aplevich (above) of Kitchener's Conestoga SC got the 3rd-place nod from the tiebreaker formula. To the best of my recollection, Dwight was one of several people who had trouble coping with the weird start line situations, and paid dearly for it in a couple of the races.

Coming all the way from North Bay were Sue Pilling and "Boy Wayfarer", Steph Romaniuk. Falling only one point short of matching their excellent 2nd-place finish of 2007, Team Mystic lost the tie-breaker and ended up series 4th. This was nonetheless two places above their seed and got them a share of the green Most Improved flags.

Mike Codd (above) of the Toronto Sailing & Canoe Club again had a great time teaming up with Kirk Iredale who is now a farmer in SW Ontario. Kirk and Mike nailed down a fine series 5th and a share of Most Improved. Of particular note was their fine victory (their first in a regatta?) in the last race, a light-air fixture in which it was not really helpful to have the crew weight of these two "men of substance". Well done, Mike and Kirk!!

A below-par Saturday performance saw the 3rd-seeded local team of John and Dolores de Boer (Dolores looking a bit cold above) unable to finish any better than 6th overall. They, too, suffered from bad starts that were hard to recover from in this capable fleet.

Another local team (sort of) was Roger Shepherd with his Kiwi crew, Raewyn Perry (above), who did a fine job under challenging circumstances - especially in race 1 where she and Roger made a great come-back to place 2nd. It was great fun to have Team Invasion with us once more, and Roger assures us that the vehicle breakdowns that prevented him and Rae from making it to the Nationals and North Americans are now taken care of and that we will see more of them in 2009 - perhaps as early as the Midwinters this coming February! No doubt we'll get to hear more of Roger's and Raewyn's trucking adventures, adventures that called Roger away to Chicago before he could sail the 6th race.

Only two points back of R & R were North Bay's Dave Richardson and Kim Rainville who combine the Pumpkin with visiting their offspring in London. No capsizes for the orange boat this year, Kim happily reports. It was, all in all, a promising series for Dave and Kim. They were up with the leaders several times but fell victim to shifts and dead spots in the first five races before putting it all together in the finale where they scored a very competitive 5th.

London's Jeff Eames and his wife, Vera, outduelled their Fanshawe club mates, Len Macdougall and Andy Turnbull, to avoid last place by two points. A Pumpkin regular who has last named W7220, Jeff plans to address his most pressing rigging needs - specifically getting a nicely functional vang and some sails with a bit more life in them than his venerable Storers - in time for the 2009 season. His boat name? Oh yes: Bloody Thing.

It speaks well for the high level of our Wayfarers' racing abilities, when I could look at Len and Andy live and in the many Pumpkin pictures, and find no noticeable flaws in their boat and sail trim or in their boat handling. It's rare that you can say that for a last-place boat in most other fleets. Well done, Len and Andy! It was, as always, a pleasure to sail with you!

... the many Fanshawe volunteers - most especially to Kevin Biskaborn who not only does the magnificent Fanshawe YC website, but who also did the lion's share of Pumpkin 2008 organizational work. And that's not to mention that Kevin spent much of Saturday night and Sunday afternoon creating framed individualized awards for each and every Pumpkin participant (see sample above) complete with a personal action shot chosen from the many fine pictures taken by Bob Steer, FYC Commodore Paul Chesman and Steve Currie.

Flash! Kevin has just sent the complete list of those who gave up their weekend so that we could have a great time:

Hi Al,

Here are more of the volunteers:

In the Race Hut: Rob Perquin, Marc Lacoursiere, Jim & Doug MacKenzie

Registration: Rob Perquin, Marc Lacoursiere

Safety Boats:  Mike Morris, Steve Currie, Ross Green, John Bryant, Paul Chessman, Graham Forrester

Kitchen: Carleen Hone, Kim Petteplace, Lisa King, Denise Kinting, Denis Dube, Nancy Stanlick

P.S. everyone is really enjoying all your captions... quite a lot of work. I think I'll have to retire before I can pull something like that off. Very impressive, thank you. I will definitely link to your pages when I get around to writing a report (I may steal some lines from you ;)

Take care, Kevin