The Regatta That Wasn't

In most SIs we are told that one race constitutes a regatta. It seems a very low bar, and I have participated in only one regatta where only one race was possible. That was in Annapolis this year for a spring regatta. But now, I can claim to have participated in a regatta where no races were held. Welcome to Port Credit Yacht Club, Four Sisters Regatta, 2008.

For two days, an assembly of kids and big kids (the few masters in attendance) enjoyed some of the most unpromising weather ever encountered. It seems to be the norm this year. 

Saturday started well. We went out a little late in a couple of knots of wind blowing from about 180. Before we could get a race off the wind went to 140. There was one general, and then, I think, another, as it was impossible to cross the start line on starboard. We waited, and after about 30 minutes, tried another start. The fulls were first on the trapazoid and made it to the weather mark (Paul Muldoon second, me third) when a motor boat crew raced through the fleet waving a flag, blowing a horn and telling us all to return to the starting line. No one could understand why. I had surmised that it was because of the start. Though the line was better than the first, port was still heavily favoured and half the fleet was over at the pin. Many rounded the pin and restarted. Many did not. It would have been impossible for the race committee to sort out who was and was not clear given the mayhem. I expected that, after deliberation, they realized the race needed to be abandoned.

Not so. We learned as we sailed back in our 140 breeze that there was another breeze in town, and it was blowing from 040 and hovering around the start line where the radials and bytes had yet to start. The race committee would have had to completely reconfigure the course to accommodate the new breeze for the radials and bytes, but could not because we were already sailing the old course. They rightly abandoned the race.

We waited, again, for one or the other breeze to fill in. The 140 breeze filled, but it was shifty so we waited and waited for it to settle. It built to about 12 knots and it looked like we were in for a treat, but instead we were in for lighting and thunder, and at the first crack of lighting, the fleet turned tail. About half way home, I heard the three guns that meant the committee had abandoned racing for the day.

So far, not so bad. Many regattas have suffered though a bad first day. Then Sunday morning dawns, and we are looking at sheets of relentless rain, which is fine, but with no wind to accompany it. It was one of those flat, dull, warm dishrag days with absolutely no promise of anything good. I waited till about 11:00am, and could not in good conscience waste the rest of the day in the thin hope that things would change. I left. I was right. Later, Harri Palm, a master from Guelph Lake Community Sailing Club, told me in an email that the committee blew off the regatta at 2:00pm.

The post script of this sorry event was an effort on my part to get my registration money back. I suppose I was pushing it. Understandably, there was no offer on the part of PCYC to refund money to competitors who did not get any racing in, but I thought that, maybe if I paid regatta fees for which there was no regatta, there might be some accommodation if I asked. The short version of the email exchange that followed is that there are expenses to cover regardless of whether a race is run or not, and the risk of not having a regatta is born as a result entirely by the competitors. I'll confess it irks me some still, though I totally understand that the expenses don't go away once a regatta is scheduled. I would suggest, with due respect, that the expenses would be somewhat less, and I wouldn't mind some concession be made to recognize my loss. To compound my irksomeness, I learned only afterward, that the club was unwilling to collect the Gold Cup fee ($3 per competitor) for the Laser Class Association and so the association is out a few hundred dollars while PCYC has saved a few hundred dollars having run no races. It may be only a few hundred bucks, but it's not the money, it's the bad blood it fosters between the OSA and the Laser Class Association that becomes the problem.

Anyway, I'll stop meddling. It's off to Brockville, and the hope of better things to come.