Vancouver July Regatta

by David Dale-Johnson

July 21 and 22 offered almost perfect conditions for the July One Design Regatta.   Mostly sunshine with wind speeds from the west in the 8 to 12 knot range made for a great sailing weekend.  Most expected the westerly to die toward the end of each day but that did not happen.  Perfect Dragon sailing conditions for English Bay. 
The race committee set the course to the west of the club to avoid the usual collection of anchored freighters and to increase the likelihood of a steady breeze.  And the strategy worked.  Stars and Martin 242s joined the regatta on Saturday with Stars and a couple of 6 Metres out on Sunday.  The westerly was pretty consistent and there were not excessive currents at the weather mark.  The only weird sailing condition was an occasional header at the layline on port tack to the weather mark making an early tack from the beach a winner.

The new Ayrborn is still not on the dock although reputed to be in North America across the border somewhere.  Lane Rud and his wife and son joined the fleet on Sunday in Wren (the old Ayrborn) for some practice as they had not formally entered the regatta.  They sailed close enough to the fleet for all to know that the new Wren will present a serious threat to the rest of the fleet just as she did as Ayrborn.  Present in the Dragon fleet were Eagle, Mistral, Black Magic, Jumala, Rum and Monkey and Blue.  Craig Strand joined the Black Magic team with new boat partner PC Cullen and old dependable Dale Northey.  Craig actually ended up at the helm partway through the Saturday races and for all of Sunday. 

The regatta ended up as a duel between Eagle and Mistral with Black Magic, Rum and Monkey and Blue fighting for third place.  Sound familiar?  Eagle ended up with bullets in every race on Sunday with the exception of one first place grabbed by Black Magic in the 5th Sunday race with Eagle taking a second and Mistral a third.  Despite his success in the last race, Craig Strand still seems to think that sailing a Martin 242 is more fun.  Baffling. 

In the end, Eagle walked away with the regatta after dominating Sunday probably because Ken managed to keep his pants on.  Without providing too many details curious Laser sailors found their way onto the course on both days.  This caused some interesting adventures as the Laser sailors somehow thought they deserved space to play as they saw fit.    
Blue had a DNC on Saturday the result of a spinnaker tear and Jumala, only recently put together with a new head stay, had some problems on Saturday with the short head stay.  Trevor on Rum and Monkey had two great new young crew members both days bringing the average age of the Dragon crew list to a new low.  With consistent crew Trevor Gibbons put together some pretty consistent racing with a bullet, a second and a bunch of thirds easily snagging third place from the usual pretenders.

Curmudgeon is rumored to be nearing completion.  Perhaps we will see her in August.   There are some rumors that Dragonfly will make an appearance in August as well. 

The race committee did a great job getting in five races each day.  Of course, with a steady westerly both days, their job was made a bit easier.  This was another perfect Dragon weekend.  Sun. No rain.  Great competition.  Great sailors. Steady westerlies both days.