by Paul Laflamme
The Club Championship series featured just about everything one could imagine in a sailing series. Wind oscillations, velocity, tactical sailing, a protest, some turns being taken, and great display of boat handling and sail trim. The day started with the Wildcard race pitting Dave Cobbett and crew from High Strung (1B Class) against David Godin and the Won Ton crew (J22 class) and Trevor Collins with the Group Therapy gang (1A class).
The winds were at approx 7 knots and primarily out of the West and North West with a 10 degree oscillation. David Cobbett rounded 1st at the windward mark with D Godin and T Collins in hot pursuit, Godin passed Cobbett on the downwind leg and never relinquished the lead after that, thus winning the Wildcard and moving on to the Club Championship (CC) Series.
After a brief delay to bring the boats to shore the CC teams came out for the first of 6 races to determine the Club Champion.
The competition was hard fought with the points lead changing several times over the course of the 6 races. Taylor Grant and crew (Puff Daddy) won the first race in convincing fashion, David Godin won the with a fair margin in 2nd race, Ron Harris and the Jazz crew took the 3rd race with a comfortable lead. The 4th race was won by Alan Gray and the crew from Slim. David Godin won the 5th race by a good distance over 2nd.
For the sake of brevity I am not describing the 2nd through 6th place finishes for each race, but I can assure you that almost all of these finishes were fairly tight and more importantly were crucial to staying in the hunt for the top spot.
The oscillating direction and velocity of the breeze made the racing very tactical and demanding of the crew and skippers alike.
Prior to the 6th and final race 4 skippers and crew were still in the running to win the Club Championship. The 6th race saw David Godin and Allan Gray jump out to a substantial lead at the 1st windward and then further again at the leeward mark. An unfortunate wind shift magnified their leads with the end result of race 6 having Allan Gray finishing 1st and David Godin 2nd.
After 6 races (one drop race allowed), only 1 point separated Godin and Gray from each other. The only thing left to do before a Club Champion could be named was to hear a protest that had been lodged during the 3rd race. The protest was submitted and the protest committee headed up by David Cobbett was convened. The end result of the protest juggled the scoring with Allan Gray and his crew of Jean Racette and Bernard le Duc being declared the HYC Club Champions for 2011. Bravo to Allan, Jean and Bernard and to all the other Club Championship competitors for a hard fought and exciting Championship series.
I would also like to thank the race committee members: Debbie Hodgson, Marian Kuiper, Larry Gray, Nick Townsend and son, Jim Freeman, Jim Simons for their great work. A note of thanks goes to Ron Harris, John Marten and Bernard LeDuc for organizing the J22s and a thank you goes out to the protest committee members, David Cobbett, Chris Campbell and Darryl Seaman for their work.
Best regards
Paul Laflamme
Senior Sailing Director
PS there is still a lot of sailing left, Fall series, the Frostbite, the Captain's Broom, the Thompson Long Distance Race, so we will see you on the water!
