Spring season racing at HYC
Well, I wasn’t sure whether to title this article, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” or “High Plain(s) ol’ Drifter''. More the former, but either one would give you some sense of the season so far.
Fun race series
First of all, let’s talk about the Fun Race Series. This definitely falls under the “Good” category. Our Fun Race series has shaped up to be a popular event and we’ve had a couple of races with some great weather. Pre-race coaching seminars have been run by myself and Shawn Lise and have covered a variety of topics including some of the fundamentals such as understanding the course, start sequences and signals, planning before the race, crew safety and comfort (“Dress for the water, not the weather”), proper sail trim for close hauled sailing and how to finish a race. We also looked at more slightly advanced concepts including race rules, tactics when approaching the windward mark, mark rounding and defending one’s position.
These seminars have covered a lot of ground so far and are the kind of thing that people pay a fair sum to learn about in sailing schools – and at HYC, it’s FREE!
The Fun Race nights have been fabulous and everyone has had a good time by learning and then doing. Fun Race nights continue through the summer and the next one is on Tuesday, July 4. Newcomers are welcome
Spring basin series
As for the regular race nights, again, I would give the Spring Series the official “Good” designation. First of all, I can’t think of the last time we managed to get in all eight scheduled races. Usually there’s at least one that’s been called off due to inclement weather of some sort. But not this year – not even with race eight experiencing the world’s worst air quality that night due to low-hanging forest fire smoke that blanketed most of southern Ontario. As for results, HYC did quite well. We got 2nd overall on Wee Beastie III. I thought for sure we had it wrapped up till results were called out after the last race when it was announced that Enigma, one of our competition from BPYC, beat us in Race 7. That was a surprise, since we beat them across the line by over 6 minutes but we lost to them on corrected time. Thing is, I had no idea I owed them quite that much time, but it was one of the longer races, so there you go. It didn’t help that we weren’t able to make it out to two of the races and Enigma got first in both. Zarko Petric took third overall in Division 2 on Merlwynd and Mike Bauer got 2nd with Midnight Express. Well done, Zarko and Mike. Again, it was a BPYC boat, Allegro, that took first in that division. Then there’s good ol’ Mike Forster and Double Vision who got 1st in Division 1. You can pretty much count on that guy to take top spot every time and, so congratulations to him and his crew for doing it once again. Summer Series starts on July 5.
Representing HYC around the lake
We've also been out and about on Wee Beastie III, racing in a few events outside the Basin, starting with the ABYC Open Regatta back on May 27. That one was definitely a “High Plain ol’ Drifter” with virtually not a speck of wind for the entire day. I feel a bit guilty for talking Mike Forster into also doing the regatta because, well, these things aren’t free and in the end we didn’t get a single race. Still, you have to hand it to the ABYC organization committee for putting together a great after party, complete with BBQ and a variety of sponsors offering taste samples of their products including Gin and Tonics, cocktails, beers and wines. Let’s just say we all made up for a somewhat uneventful day on the water and somewhere in there I played a rousing game of Euchre…at least so I’ve been told.
The following weekend we took part in the Susan Hood Trophy Race. Here’s where things shift towards the “Bad” and “Ugly” part of the spectrum – at least for WB3. I’ll cut to the chase: we got 8th out of 10 in our division and a lousy 31st out of a total of 60 boats in the fleet – we didn’t even make the top half! That was our worst performance ever at this event. And what went wrong? From what we could tell, nothing, really. We were doing just fine it seemed and then somewhere in the middle of the night, we weren’t anymore. All we can figure is that we just came out on the very wrong side of a big hole somewhere approaching Niagara. For those who maybe don’t know this race, it is a longer distance event, covering about 75 nautical miles, from Port Credit to Niagara, to Burlington and back to Port Credit. It starts around 8:00 PM on the Friday night and finishes mid-day, Saturday.
After Niagara, the winds gradually built from about 2:00 AM on. It was just about a dead run the whole way to Burlington which isn’t really the best for us with a modified asymmetrical setup. Then, just as we’re approaching the Burlington mark (actually, it’s an elevated weather station platform – you definitely don’t want to hit that thing) the winds suddenly picked up. We did an emergence last-second switch of the #2 on deck to the #3 and managed the spinnaker takedown just in time to round the mark. Whew!
The last leg back to PCYC was a bit “Ugly” as the newly-built winds were blowing steady from the east, having been moderate from the southeast for the previous several hours. This created a very uncomfortable cross-chop combined with building waves. Let’s just say it was a real slog those last few hours. And along the way, we were overtaken by the big Hanse 40, Setanta. We rate even with them and they just, lah-dee-dah, walked past us to leeward. I suppose the good news about this whole race is that Setanta is typically one of the top finishers. We feel good if we beat him. To see that they had been behind us till the last mile or so at least made us feel less bad about how we ended up in the results. Clearly we got unlucky out there somewhere if Setanta was also kicking around in our neck of the woods. He ended up 7th in division and just behind us overall in 29th. So, if we were close to Setanta, we don’t feel so bad.
Also racing in the ‘Hood was Zarko on Merlwynd, who placed 7th in division and Mike Bauer on Midnight Express who got 2nd in the double-handed division with a corrected time that beat Wee Beastie by a whopping 45 minutes!! – very impressive and congratulations, Mike!
The Sunday following the Susan Hood race was Race 1 of the Lake Ontario Short Handed Race Series, or “LOSHRS”. This is always an enjoyable race. The competition is good, the course is just the right length (15nm) and in this case, the weather was nice, too. And we did pretty well, finishing 2nd in division – behind who? Who do you think: Setanta – and a respectable 5th out of 25 in the fleet.
More racing will continue this summer and we’ll keep you posted!