Toronto Day 3 Gallery
The last day of a three-day regatta is when the leaders must protect what they have, being careful not to squander it, and the runners up go on the attack. And today, in the third and final day of the Lands’ End Toronto NOOD Regatta on Lake Ontario, one team that launched a major offensive was Richard Reid’s Beneteau 36.7 Zingara. “We’d been second overall since Friday, so the plan this morning was to go after Fromen [John Fromen’s Type A],” says Reid, last year’s Toronto NOOD Overall Winner. “We were waiting for them on the starting line, which caused us to have a terrible start, but they took care of themselves by getting messed up somehow. They were with us, but we just seemed to have better boatspeed and put in everything we had. All the practice we’ve been doing paid off.” Zingara won the first race of the day, with Type A finishing third. And in the next, Reid put on the finishing touches with a close-fought third. Fromen’s ninth in the final race dropped his team to third in the standings, allowing Gary Tisdale’s First Today to claim second overall, after the tiebreak. The total point spread in the 12-boat Beneteau 36.7 fleet boiled down to only 48 points, and four boats won individual races. Both of these factors weighed heavily in the regatta organizer’s decision to award Reid and the Zingara crew the overall title once again. The trophy earns them a berth at the Caribbean NOOD Regatta in November, where the top teams from each of the nine NOOD regattas will sail off in Sunsail Beneteau 393s. They will no doubt be the team to beat. Awarding the overall title was no easy task, however. Several divisions enjoyed tight racing, especially in the C&C 99 division. Bob Wilson, last year’s C&C 99 champion, says it was the tightest regatta he’s ever sailed with his Trumpeter. He started the day at the top of the heap, tied with Mike Kern’s Transmission, so there was only one thing to do. “We had to win the start every time,” says Wilson. “We knew if we could do that we could beat everybody, and we managed to do it in the first two races. We knew the left side was favored, and that we had to start at the pin. So we hovered around the race committee boat to draw everyone there, and then went down to the pin, go out to the left side of the racecourse, and one-tack the beat. “The other part of that was that we tried to stay under anyone who would try, or look to be trying, to take me up at the start. The Transmission guys engaged with us, and they tried to get below me several times, but I’d just let my sails out and dive below them. Wilson won the day’s first two races, and Kern was on his transom at the finish of each. But in the last race, the regatta nearly slipped from his grasp. “We got stuffed on the line and started slow, so I had to take a clearing hitch. We had to get back into third position to be able to win the regatta on the tiebreaker, so we worked on clean sailing and changing gears the entire time. We can really fly downwind, and that comes from following the pressure-chasing the wind. If we saw it coming from the right side, we’d go there, even if we had to jibe to get it.” Kern won that final race, but with a third, the win went to Wilson. In the J/35s, Roger Walker’s Battlewagon took advantage of the lead it had built over the first two days, and held its ground to win the nine-boat division by 3 points over Ed Bayer’s Falcon. On the same circle, Derek McGeachie’s Keros locked up its win in the C&C 34 division with a second and two firsts. David Shaver’s Re:Tern stumbled in the day’s first race, posting an eighth, but cruised to a 5-point win in the J/105 divions with a 1-4 in next two. The top Level boats were Adam Farkas’ Flak (Level 100), and Andrew Riem’s Curved Air (Level 126) Neil Hansen’s Pika (Level 141). The standout performance of Division C belongs to Larry Bayer’s C&C 27 Yogi Bear. Having owned the boat for 29 years, and having invested in a new set of sails, Bayer was untouchable, winning seven of nine races for a final margin of 14 points. Todd Irving’s J/24 Narcoleptic went 3-1-3 to secure the J/24 title, and Kendra Delicaet’s UNC was the top Shark by 2 points. A near contender for the overall trophy was Diane Palm’s 8 Meter Venture II, which emerged victorious from a competitive five-race series with only 7 points. On the same circle, Kirsten Werner’s Silver Bullet was the top Beneteau 40.7, and Alek Krstajic’s Farr 40 Honour was the top 40-foot class entry, both on the water and under a separate IRC scoring scheme. Jim Richardson’s Barking Mad finally got the better of Jeff Maludy’s Adrenaline to win the Mumm 30 division by 3 points, and returns to the states with the Mumm 30 Canadian Championship trophy. And finally, the fresher breeze was to Allan Leibel’s liking in the 2.4 Meter class. In the consistent 10-knot southeasterly, by far the best wind of the regatta, Leibel won all four of his races to win by 6 points over his rival Bruce Millar. For complete results from the 2006 Lands’ End Toronto NOOD
