The Sail Parry Sound team of Sue Pilling and Steph Romaniuk overcame a start-line seven-twenty and the resulting large deficit to win the 57th annual Wayfarer Long Distance Race in an elite fleet of six boats. Of the six competing helms, four had won our finest trophy at least once. It was particularly lovely to have Frank Goulay and his wife, Kim Bergevin, back with us in the lovely wooden W648 KGB after a seven-year absence. And what a marvellous surprise it was to see Barry Hitchcock back to much improved health after recent difficulties!


This year the Long Distance Race was set to make its Parry Sound debut on Saturday 5 August, after a storied history that began in 1961 in Brockville and included dozens of stop-overs in the North Bay area and occasional stops in Conestoga and Lac Deschênes. Unfortunately, cool, wet and threatening weather forced postponement to Sunday. This made it impossible for the defending champions, Davids, Hansman and Richardson, as well as Uncle Al's intended crew, Jeff Beitz, to sail in the event due to previous Sunday commitments.
 

Sunday morning lived up to its brighter forecasts of sunshine, warmer weather and less wind. After breakfast chez Pilling, we were provided with waterproof maps that meticulously outlined and explained the course (above). That explanation was verbally amplified and by 11 AM or so we were off from a shore-based start line between the club and a moored tugboat half a mile away across the bay.


Sailing solo, Uncle Al got a port-tack start at the "boat" (right) end of the line as close to the rocks as he dared. After only a couple of board scrapes and an auto-released rudder blade, Al got his blades back down and led the way up the first beat going centre-right towards the first windward mark, green buoy "R35", as did Frank and Kim as well as one of our two Conestoga teams, Leo Van Kampen and wife, Joanne in a fine breeze of 8 to 12 knots. A port-starboard accident right at the start left Sue and Steph in a bit of a hole after doing their turns for having fouled Oakville's David and Anne Pugh.

After a fine upwind leg into winds that were somewhat changeable in both strength and direction, Al rounded "R35" to starboard, holding a slight lead over Frank, Leo and David as the fleet began the second leg, a fairly close port-tack reach to Three-Tree Island which was to be left to port.


David and Anne went high on the reach and then successfully flew their spinnaker into the lead just before we reached Three-Tree Island which they rounded with a nice little edge over Uncle Al (above) onto another fairly lengthy beat to mark ????? to be left to starboard. We all escaped the island's wind shadow in fairly short order. Being directly in the Pughs' dirt, Al tacked to starboard to clear his air only to sail into a dead spot. So he tacked back to follow David despite the fact that the four trailing boats had all peeled off onto starboard. Perhaps ten minutes later, port tack began to get lifted, and David counter-intuitively but very wisely tacked, leaving Al with clear air on the lifted port tack. Al's joy was short-lived, however, as he began to realize he was on outside of a persistent 30° lift. By the time he finally bit the bullet and tacked across ...