On the gusty final day on the smallboat course, two J/24s lost crew overboard, and Rob Erglis’ Hot Box and Morten Fogh’s Fogh Marine, both in the hunt for silver, dropped out to help. Each received average points from the jury, and Hot Box finished second for the series. Thomas Barbeau’s Navtechica won the 26-boat class with four firsts. Going for a swim had a different meaning for Detroit skipper Dave Shriner, who took an unscheduled plunge Sunday–one secretly planned by his crew as a victory celebration for their Beneteau 36.7 Legend. The team had traded firsts with Gary Tisdale’s First Today throughout the regatta but put the hammer down on Sunday to finish with two bullets. Shriner and his father, Dan, who crews on the boat, stepped up from a Morgan 27 recently. Says trimmer Lynn Kotwicki, “We’re headed to the North Americans now and have a big target painted on us.” Dick Steffen, sailing his Zoo II amongst a group of similar 30-foot custom MORC boats, survived an early challenge in light air from Bill MacLeod’s FastTrak and a near-last place finish in the final race to beat Adam Farkas’ Flak by 1 point in the Level 96-106 class. In Level 72-90, Peter Quackenbush’s J/33 Moongator came back from a DSQ to win the series with four firsts, including a photo finish with four boats overlapped. By contrast, it looked like an easy win for for Michael Jones and Arthur English’s J/105 Starcross, winners of the first four races in an 11-boat class. But then the wind came up. First the chute went over the side at a leeward mark. In the next race they blew up their roller furler and sailed half a beat jib-less. Luckily, their rivals struggled, too, and Starcross won by 10 points. For complete results go to the Toronto NOOD section of the website.
