From: Steph Romaniuk [mailto:smromaniuk@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, October 2, 2023 11:22 AM

Hi Al:

It is the warmest Pumpkin Regatta I have been to - sunny and 27 degrees Celsius! Unfortunately the wind forecast was 2-4 knots. Six Wayfarers attended the event including one local team. There were four junior sailors in a Laser Radial fleet, 6 full rig Lasers, 3 Y-flyers and a half-dozen keelboats - 27 boats in all.

We headed out for the 11am warning signal Saturday - Sue and I barely made the start as a missing gooseneck forced us to borrow and jury-rig Jens Biskaborn's boom to fit our boat. Boats were drifting about and there were whispers of wind here and there. There seemed to be less wind close to shore (above) so most boats were milling about the committee boat end of the line with only a few of us at the port end, which was heavily favoured (you couldn't cross the line on starboard) but risky due to less wind.

Mike and Lee Codd were up at the pin and us a bit further back. We had to tack to avoid the Pughs drifting down the line on starboard. To make things more challenging, all the Lasers were also starting with us. Red Top (Codds) and the Pughs shot off with good speed at the gun, with us following and the others coming away a bit more slowly at the committee boat end. It was a drag race to the windward mark - we were climbing as much as possible in case the wind shifted.

We three leaders rounded the mark ahead of the crowd, and reached back towards the start line with spinnakers in maybe 5 knots of wind. I don't know much at this point as I was focusing on the spinnaker, which then went slack as we drifted to a stop. The skippers noticed that the Y-flyers who had the start sequence ahead of us were now close-hauled ahead of us to fetch the mark, so the Codds and us dropped our chutes and patiently moved towards the mark.

We stopped on the dead side of the start line while the Codds and Pughs held their 1-2 positions around the mark. Scott and Les were in the middle of the second leg and that's where the wind held - they were almost the only boat moving with the spinnaker still flying and got to the mark before us. It was a mess of boats, hitting marks, getting the door shut, or getting away with a mark rounding with no rights because the 'protesters' weren't moving. We had to do a 360 to avoid a Y-flyer and then rounded.

On the second beat, we made several tacks to try and capture the wisps of wind, but could not catch back up to Les and Scott as they crossed 3rd ahead of us (Sue Pilling and Steph Romaniuk. Leo Van Kampen sailed with a replacement crew, Joanne's physiotherapist, Tracy McWhirter, who had never been in a Wayfarer before, but you wouldn't know it as the spinnaker looked good. Long-time Len Macdougall crew, Andy Turnbull, and wife, Lucy,  lost a by a nose to Leo and ended up 6th.  .

We went in for lunch and then they called off the rest of the racing for the day. When we went to move our boat to haul out, we caught a puff of wind and shot off down the lake (above), whooping all the way while others just padded on the glass lake, but it was short-lived. It was great to have more time to visit since we hadn't raced since June. We got graced with the awesome turkey dinner that the volunteers put together for us, free wine, and spread of desserts. The singular result was posted so we joked at calling them result(s). The next morning, most hesitated to launch the boats; two of us did when they started the keelboats at 10am, but that race got abandoned and the rest of the day abandoned shortly thereafter.

The result was in - the Red Top award trophy, so fittingly, would go to Red Top, George Blanchard's old boat, sailed by Lee and Mike Codd. They made the trophy for George's 90th for the Pumpkin Regatta as his Oct. 5th birthday often landed on that weekend. They couldn't call it the "George Blanchard Memorial Trophy" because he was still alive :) He made it to 96... Mike (above) was noticeably moved as he accepted the award and thanked the venue for all the work that goes into this event, plus food, lunch, logistics, etc. The next event here would be next June - June Bug, which will be the first or second week of June.

Steph