| the 2009 Warm Water Regatta Conestoga Sailing Club * June 6-7 a Regatta Report by Uncle Al ... |
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The northern Wayfarer racing
circuit got under way June 6-7 with the Conestoga SC's annual Warm
Water Regatta. Blessed by mild conditions in all the weather aspects:
temperatures, winds and partial cloud cover, this year's Warm Water
attracted 15 entries.
 Friday evening at the Conestoga SC: Warm sunshine bathes the newly erected tent village as (l to r) John de Boer, Julia Schonborn and Dolores de Boer get into "regatta mode" for the 2009 season. Three Lasers sailed the Open
Fleet while ten Wayfarers and two CL 16s competed (in theory!) for the
temporarily misplaced Carling Trophy (see
photo below) which has gone to the Wayfarer winners most years
since 1972.
 Uncle Al and son, Dave, won the Carling Trophy in 2003 The dozen teams in the W-fleet
continued a recent rising attendance trend as we had an increase of two
boats over last year's enthusiastic group of ten. And we were very
close to getting 14 entries! New Wayfarer, Bob Brown of the Mississauga
SC was poised to join us in his recently acquired W8261 Grey Matter until a family
emergency (now successfully taken care of) forced Bob to wait until
next year's Warm Water.
 Meanwhile an expected 14th
team, 2008 Ontario
Wayfarer champions, Frank Goulay and Kim Bergevin (above left), did actually make it
all the way from Ottawa. With Roxanne (above
right) "hired on" as recreation director for Kameron and
Gabrielle, Frank and Kim were hoping to sail one of the CSC's club
Wayfarers in the regatta. Unfortunately, it turned out that getting one
of these boats
race-ready was going to make their planned vacation week-end a little
too
hectic, so the group decided to just relax. As seen above, they had a
great time.
 With lots of volunteers firing
on all cylinders for Regatta Chair, Jeff Fedor (above), the 2009 Warm Water ran
smoothly from start to finish. A big
Wayfarer thank you to the
following:
 And of course, we all got
together (above) for
Saturday night supper at the Heidelberg
Tavern where we enjoyed
the usual great food and drink.
 So how was the racing, I hear
you ask. Perfect. Challenging. Winds ranging from light enough to
require careful sail trimming in order to keep the boats moving to
overpowering though never scary. The competition was close,
with most of us finishing within a few minutes of the others in each
race. Our
committee managed to give us a fine six-race series which they split
into three nicely digestible two-race chunks, Saturday before lunch,
Saturday after lunch and Sunday - while still leaving us lots of time
to
socialize on shore.
 Saturday's four races were
sailed buoys to starboard into a NW wind of 5 to 15 knots -
triangle-sausage-windward, with the leeward mark (#3 above) down towards the
dam and a start/finish
line about 100 yards to windward of that mark, making for a very short
though at times dramatic final beat. The course - unless shortened -
was thus 1-2-3-1-3-finish.
 By Sunday morning, the wind had
shifted 180° to the south-east for our last two races. With a start
near #1 above, we began a buoys-to-port course with a beat to #3, a
run-reach to #2, a reach to #1, added a 3-1 sausage and finished with
the short beat once more.
The series-winning team of Al Schonborn (Oakville, ON) and Nick Seraphinoff (Detroit, MI) turned out to be a last-minute creation when Nick's intended crew bowed out and Al's intended crew, Julia, said she'd be quite happy to spend a relaxing Warm Water weekend ashore, if Nick wanted to crew for Al as he had done at the Midwinters. Although the races were mostly close, Al and Nick had that little edge when it counted and were the only top boat with real consistency as they ended up counting five firsts - not bad for a guy just off an angioplasty (Uncle Al) and Nick with his vertebrae fused less than a year ago. Geezers rampant!! The fight for the runner-up
spot went down to the wire between Conestoga's Dwight Aplevich sailing
with his wife, Pat, and Alastair Ryder-Turner of the Mississauga SC who
sailed with his son, David. Things looked grim for Dwight and Pat in
both Sunday races where they were well back in the fleet but managed to
recover. In race 5 they fought their way back to finish just one place
back of Alastair and David
to maintain a one-point edge entering the decisive finale. Here,
Dwight's local knowledge came in handy as he moved past Alastair who
had been lying a close 2nd to Uncle Al when the former got stuck in the
wind shadow off the east point. When Dwight and Pat held 2nd in that
shortened final race they nailed down series second ahead of Alastair
and David.
As the last race got under way,
four teams still had a good
shot at series 4th. In the end, there
was a points tie between Toronto Sailing & Canoe Club's Mike
Codd who was sailing with his seven-year-old daughter Lilly, and
the now married Marc Bennett and Julie Seraphinoff living weekends in
Sarnia and the rest of the week in Bramalea, ON and East Lansing,
MI. The 7th-seeded Mike's 2-4-4-6-7 finishes gave him the
tie-breaker and series 4th over Marc who scored 2-5-5-5-6. By placing
three positions above their seeded 7th-place expectations, Mike and
Lilly took Most Improved
honours for the 2009 Warm Water. Well done - spinnaker and all - Lilly
and Mike!!
Two points further back in series 6th were Roger Shepherd and Raewyn Perry of Dutton, ON who in turn edged out London, Ontario's John and Dolores de Boer by a pair of points. Next came the first of the CL's: Coburg's Colin Junkin who sailed with Sean Ouckama what with the lovely Heather being off on a ladies' weekend somewhere. Colin and Sean coped very well with this, their first Conestogo Lake experience. In a battle of Conestoga boats, Al Nichols and Ken Nethercott edged out Leo Van Kampen and his wife, Joanne, for series 9th. Team Nichols seemed to be not quite as fast upwind as they were last year in the stronger breezes, and exactly matched their 9th seed position. Leo and Joanne on the other hand, entered the series seeded 12th and thus came close to taking Most Improved by placing series 10th. Well done, Leo and Joanne! Also making their début in the tricky Conestogo Lake winds were Mississauga's Rob Wierdsma and his son, Daniel (aged 13) who duelled it out with another family team, the Iredales. Sailing their cottage CL, Kirk and Virginia (14) - and once or twice, Stirling (12), took things fairly easy and ended up two points behind the Wierdsmas who certainly made a splash with their lovely hiking form in the photo (below) that illustrated the K-W Record's report on the Warm Water.  |