I’m getting ready for 2010 with a Web site update. I’ve reorganized the sidebar to the right over the past week or so. I’ve done away with sub-pages, which readers may or may not have noticed. Everything is now on the menu at the top and the sidebar is generally tidier.
I’ve decided that users will probably find it more effective if we alert them to what’s upcoming in the near future as opposed to burying them within my personal albeit seasonal ramblings. Of course, this isn’t a lot upcoming in the near future rignt now (notice the flurries on the site for the Holiday season). Dale Robertson, however, wants me to let everyone know that the Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron will be hosting the 2010 J24 Nationals. I’ve made it the first item on our list of current events. I hope to add a J29 North Americans during the winter also. For now, Dale wants volunteers so if you want to contribute email him now.
J Crossing
The J24 and J29 Class meetings and Award Night went off without a noticeable hitch last night. The 29 Class meeting was particularly well attended with 20 participants representing nine boats, six of whom came from PEI for the occasion. I tried to count up the Awards Night attendance six or seven times but somebody would get up to get a drink or some more cake before I could finish every time. My best guess is 43, which I was happy with considering the competition from the Uteck Bowl (poor Huskies) and the Parade of Light.
Lots of decisions were made at the 29 meeting, some about not changing rules that have worked fine for us but also about encouraging more travel and better enforcement of the rules that we do have. We also agreed to make the Lunenburg J29 Regatta the North American Championship if at all possible or, at the very least, the Canadian Championship (to which we will invite our American counterparts with open arms). Watch for a separate article with the meeting minutes as soon as I can get them done.
I have less on the J24 session, but I saw at least a dozen coming from that. One very important piece of news is that the Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron will host the J24 Canadians in 2010. Dale Robertson has been recruited to be the Chair and he is very busy already recruiting others to do all the work. Watch for a J24 Nationals page to appear here soon enough.
The winners of the awards were reported a long time ago. Greg Blunden (Adrenaline Rush) was the 2009 Season Champion in the J24 Class, and Jim Mason and Evan Petley-Jones (Satisfaction) topped the J29s. We also dished out a monstrous trophy to Mike Orr who was ably assisted by Ian Dawson in dominating the three One Day One Design events in Limerick.
The unannounced events of the evening were major thank yous to Chris MacDonald and Dale Robertson for their respective roles in building the J29 and J24 classes. Mike O’Connor, who has known Chris since he was just a young fellow crying through his first day at the Lunenburg YC Learn to Sail Program, gave Chris nice roast. Unfortunately, Chris could not attend for the same reason he is no longer J29 President for Life, his kids, with whom he was at the Parade of Lights. Although I’ve never seen Dale cry, I’ve known him nearly as long, so I did the honours there. It is getting hard to keep Dale’s head in the room though when you start piling Life Achievement Awards onto his Sailor of the Year hardware.
For me, at least, it’s the end of the season. I’ll keep on blogging and might even reorganize a few things, especially since I’ve been drafted to host the Canadian Nationals on this site. If our plans for Lunenburg come off, we may well be hosting a second Nationals or even a North Americans. Either way, we’ll have a strong schedule and even more activity for J sailors across Atlantic Canada.
Chris MacDonald at sea
While there is some uncertainty about the evolution of the class from 1983 when Chris’s father bought Scotch Mist IV, Chris has been a constant. In the eighties, Scotch Mist was sailed out of Lunenburg and was a fixture in handicap events against the 29 likes of Painkiller, Ground Zero (now Hakuna Matata), and Wandrian (Red Snapper/Focus/ Chaos/Silver Lady). I’ve got conflicting information about when exactly the class became a one-design force but I’m reckoning it was most likely in the mid-1990s, since it was a thriving fleet by the time I came on the scene.
Somewhere in there, the 29 class made a breakthrough. Even in the old days, the class attracted some damn good sailors but as it progressed it became a magnet for the most competitive keelboat sailors in Atlantic Canada. Also somewhere along the line someone decided a President was needed and Chris was the choice (or maybe he led a violent revolution?). Once he was in, he provided the leadership under which the class has grown and prospered.
I’ve sometimes wondered what has made the J29 class so strong here. Certainly, 29s are good boats with nice wide decks that support a good party just as well as they support a half dozen hiking crew. They are also available for ultra reasonable prices. But they haven’t succeeded anywhere like they have in the Maritimes and Chris has been a leading influence throughout cultivating a network and a routine that runs itself.
While no one seems to be keeping records, Chris was President for a decade at the very least. He has children now and a busy job. As of this spring he gave up the position of President for Life. Scotch Mist IV sails on, though, and Chris has left a tremendous legacy in a strong class that provides first class competition and fun for well over 100 people every year.
Saraguay House
Its gone one way and then the other, but our first gala awards event is scheduled for Saturday, November 21, at Saraguay House at the Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron. It was going to be November 28 but the Squadron management rented the space while I was trying to figure out how many chairs we needed. Never thought about that with Christmas coming and all.
The T-shirt says it all
News Flash
At last night’s Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron Annual Awards Dinner Dale Robertson was named the Squadron’s Sailor of the Year.
The article on the huge J24 event at Prince of Wales Weekend mentioned that Dale Robertson resigned as President of the Atlantic District of the J24 class two days before the regatta. The District is now in the capable hands of Greg Blunden. It is about time, though, to recognize what Dale has accomplished in what I believe is three and a half years as President.
Its all over. In fact, its all been over for more than a month. The season winners were announced at the Prince of Wales prizegiving at the RNSYS but it’s past due to get it in print.
The Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron held its final One Day One Design on September 26 attracting six J24s. In keeping with the J24 pattern, there was no pattern. Ted Murphy, the eventual winner, rounded the first windward mark of the first race, as I recall, in last place but worked up to a fourth, and then added three firsts in the next four races. Ted was coming off a seventh in the Etchells 22 North Americans and there’s nothing strange about taking a leg to get used to things. Ted was followed on the podium by Dale Robertson and Andrew Rankin.
J-Zeus sneaks a peak
Lynn Gray of Ocean Media Design has taken some beautiful pictures of both J24s and J29s in action on the Sunday of Prince of Wales Weekend but this one with the top three 24s in the final race overlapped at the leeward mark and four more 24s overlapping and fading in the distance is my favorite. Says it all about the entry and the competition.
This year’s Nationals were hosted by Hudson Yacht Club in Hudson, Quebec, which is a very lovely little village west of Montreal on the Ottawa River just before it meets the St. Lawrence. As I said previously I have experience at Hudson and it tends to be either flat nothing or a wild ass blow. The part I saw was a wild ass blow but it seems like the next two days were atypically middle of the road. Pity to have missed them (see below for details).
In any case, its over now and the Atlantic contingent did well with the racing part if not with some of the navigation. The Nationals Web site is not the greatest but they do have pics.
In the distance, Super Dale Robertson in J-Zeus is port tacking the fleet
While I have always called it the Fall One Design, I notice this year that the Squadron is calling their fall regatta Prince of Wales Weekend or POW. It makes sense, given that the big trophy is the one that we got from Queen Victoria’s son while he had nothing better to do but trip around yacht clubs and nightclubs, and get fat as his Mum lived into her nineties. Possibly even more relevant is that the second weekend in September is not actually fall. You can add to that my crew were getting it confused with the One Day One Design, which I named a few years back.
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