Shark Canadians

The 2005 Shark Canadians Championship was held at Kingston Yacht Club this weekend. We had a mixed bag of wind and weather, but after the two days we got the maximum six races in.

I was sailing with Maryanne and Paul Davis aboard Shadfly, Jamie Shadwell?s boat. We hadn?t even got on the boat before Saturday morning, so we were kind of winging it for this regatta. Maryanne and Paul have been joking for the past week about who was going to ?drive the bus? as both are world champion sailors. Maryanne won the arm wrestle (best two out of three) and we had Paul doing middle and me on the foredeck.

We had a crazy NE breeze the first day, which led to some crazy lanes and patchy conditions. Paul and I had sailed in these conditions at the worlds, so I had a pretty good idea of how he was going to want to run the boat. Concentration was good and we played the shifts and pressure well. The breeze filled in from the south in the afternoon, and we had some better conditions.

A huge storm cloud moved over the race course in the mid-afternoon, and made things a little more complicated tactically. We played this well and manage a first in the last day of the race. We had a squall come through with torrential rain for about half an hour, which meant we had to hang on to our lead while madly wiping off our sunglasses so we could see the windward mark.

After the first day Shadfy was tied for first place and we were very happy with the results. (Other than the fact that we really had our work cut out for us on Sunday.)

The dinner at the club was good (Cory always puts on a good spread) and we had a few beers to celebrate the day?s successes. It was great to hang out some folks from the worlds and tell war stories from the day. I really like the Shark fleet; they are great sailor?s and they love to party when they get off the water.

Sunday morning was very, very light. The N breeze still dominated from 1000-1100 and then died completely. Around 1200 the thermal started to fill in and we soon had a 10-knot building breeze from the south. Classic sailing in Kingston.

We had a bit of a hard day, placing 6th and then 10th. This moved us from first to fourth.

The awards went smoothly and, as usual, the boats got out of town as soon as things were wrapped up there.

We had a super fun weekend. I?m a little beat up, but relatively happy with the final results.

Maybe next year?

Shark World Cup

If you are a regular reader you know that I often make promises to blog events, and then realize when I get there that I have neither the time nor the energy to write after a long day of sailing. I?m working on it. (I kind of kept a journal? OK I wrote on the first night :~)

Southport Sailing Club hosted the Shark World Cup this year and they did a fantastic job. From the time we first showed up at the gate to the award ceremony, we found them to be well organized, fun and hospitable. Good food, good beer (thanks to Steelback Breweries) and lots of fun sharkies to party with, made this event really fun.

We had been set up with the Jim and Lee Ann Haplin for our billets. We each got a room of our own, a full bathroom for the three of us to share and we even managed to get access to his wireless router for checking weather and email. Jim volunteered on the Race Committee and Lee Ann was in charge of putting together breakfast for the whole regatta. Even with these duties she found time to make coffee for us before she left. Super great people.

But the sailing is what was really awesome. Although Paul Davis, Peter van Rossem, and myself only had a few practices before leaving Kingston, we quickly got into the groove at KYC and felt pretty good going into the regatta. Top ten seemed a reasonable goal.

The racing proved to be really tough. In the first three days of the regatta all the results looked to be scrambled up from what you thought they should be. Regular leaders in the fleet were way deep and some of the new guys were a lot further up in the standing than I thought they should be. Admittedly, we had some light and flukey wind with lots of lanes.

We managed to keep respectable finishes for the first few days. We seemed to be finding our groove in the 10th-11th place area. We were 10th overall going into the last day of racing.

On the last day we got out to the course early (a good habit) and cleaned the bottom (Thanks Pete!) and got some wind readings and a couple of transits. The first start went well and we were in the leading pack at the first weather mark. Over the next legs we picked off a few boats and found ourselves in even position with 711, Jin from Montreal with Shark Poop not far behind.

We got into a jybing duel about 200? from the finish with him just half a length in front. In the four jybes, we came out ahead, with poor Jin nearly dead in the water. We took the first with cheers from the pin end race committee boat. (Our billet and biggest fan, Jim was on board.) It felt so good to win one, and a very important one. We did the math and found that we were in third!

The last race we kept pace and kept picking off boats after a fairly good start. We ended up fourth. After the race we high tailed it to the crane and won that last important race. (Crackerjack almost always wins this one, they were a close second.)

Awards were fun and I was able to have a few beers as Paul was driving.

The drive home was absolutely brutal. We left at 2100 and arrived in Kingston about 0330 after repeated stops, tonnes of traffic in TO and torrential rain in spots. Pete had it almost as bad as he was riding his bike.

All and all, a totally great experience.

Up next: Canadian Championship in Kingston.