© Dave Reed

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Around the docks at the Royal Canadian YC, Jim Rathbun (not Rathburn,
my apologies for the mistake in last night's story) can point out the
various operations, and there are many he says, that he's done on the
sailors at the Sperry Top-Sider NOOD Regatta in Toronto: elbows, knees,
hips, you name it. His surgical precision has put many a competitor
back on the water in good working order, but this weekend the good
doctor stitched together his own winning series to take not only the
J/105 class title but the event's overall title as well.
There's no doubt the Doctor and his talented crew will do well at the
Caribbean NOOD Championship to make his RCYC proud. As a longtime
competitor, his sailing skills and his intensity on the racecourse are
said to be on par with his good-natured humor as well as his rum pour.
Such talents will make him hard one to beat in the Sunsail charter
boats of the British Virgin Islands. But in today's light to moderate winds on Lake Ontario it was no easy pickings for Rathbun's crew on Hey Jude.
Having revealed the importance of staying away from the packs in light
air yesterday, he says it was much the same today. After breaking away
from a tightly bunched group after they start, they managed a third in
the day's one and only race, which the race committee got off after a
long wait for wind and two general recalls. "Third was all we needed," says Rathbun. "It was still a tough day, but we had 7 points between us [with Robert Baker's Planet B, which finished second overall.]
But enough of the J/105s already. What of the other hundred or so
competitors spread across 16 classes? There was a lot happening across
the regatta's four circles. Take the J/35 fleet where the
Bayer/Barnes/Bayer trio of owners of Falcon mixed it up on the start before breaking away just enough to finish second to Paul Casola's Stryder.
In the end, only a single point separated these two boats-this after
nine tough races over three days. Mind you those were nine races in
winds that peaked at 25 knots and went as low as 7. And let's
not overlook the Sharks, the regatta's biggest fleet, and the local
one-design standout. This ubiquitous design may be approaching 35 years
(as I'm told), but it has found a permanent home here in the Toronto
area. Those who race them do so with fervor. At the end of each day the class had a new leader, but class standout Kendra Delicaet came out on top. Her team on UNC
didn't win a single race, but they had plenty of top-five finishes in
the 18-boat fleet, and sailed every race, including the gear buster on
Friday afternoon. Take a look at the scores and you'll see how
important it is to keep the alphabet out of one's scoreline.
PHRF fleets were a new addition to this event, and given the wide
variety of boats scattered across Lake Ontario, there were some
interesting match ups in the four divisions. With winds blowing across
the range, no one boat could claim to have it their way all weekend.
The standouts of the PHRF contingent, however, were John McLeod's J/133
Hot Water and Erwyn Naidoo's J/27 Bohica,
which went undefeated. As the big boat in its fleet, Hot Water sailed a
near-perfect series (that would be six firsts and a second for the
record), and from this writer's perspective on the media boat, their
boathandling was superb with every rounding. If there's one
thing that stands out about this event, compared to others on the
nine-stop NOOD circuit, it's prevalence of young crew and family teams.
Fritz Odenbach's Beneteau 40.7 is one such program. With wife Sandra,
the kids and other youngins, Odenbach's Amorita won three of seven races to earn their win, all the while enjoying a close contest with Kris and Kirsten Werner's Mullet.
"We had a 2-point lead going into today," he says, "and we knew we only
had to stay close. It was a battle but we drove them back to fourth
place. It was a good way to win it after a hard week, especially after
Friday; we only had nine in the crew and we were definitely lighter
than anyone else, but [with finishes of 1-2] we were happy to do as
well as we did." Last year, says Odenbach, they skipped the
awards and drove home disappointed with their third-place finish, but
this time they were sticking around for the awards. And awards they
got: first overall and the Beneteau First 40.7 Lake Ontario
Championship title. Perhaps it's fitting to give the final
word of this regatta to Bob Wilson, who has now won it four times
straight: the last three with his C&C 99 Trumpeter.
He all but had the regatta in hand, but left nothing to chance in the
day's final race. "We were only trying to cover Bear Necessity
[skippered by Dexter Hallsal] and we had the regatta won. So for the
second race I did what I did yesterday. I left the course, took down my
No. 1 and put up my No. 2. When the wind gets up into that 12- to
14-knot wind range it's all about sail choice. When you have 12 to 14
you know you'll have gusts to 15, which definitely puts you into the
range of the No. 2-with the No. 1 you'll be sliding sideways when those
puff hits. Maybe people just get too comfortable with the sail they
have up." When it's all said and done the scores
speak for themselves, so to see what happened in the regatta's other
classes go check them out. Marblehead is next for the NOOD regatta team
in July, so be sure to be there or stay tuned to find who else will go
up against Canada's sailing surgeon in November.