Club sailing has ended and the annual club haul-out is well underway, drawing to a close another NSC sailing season! While 2017 may have been “the summer the sun forgot”, the extended Indian Summer and great winds made for a fantastic autumn. Fall 2017 was incredibly active time on the water with a packed schedule of organised club sailing events for members to enjoy right up to mid-October.
And it was a pleasure to see so many fellow members take advantage of the opportunities whatever their chosen sailing activities. I look forward to jointly celebrating with you the joys and achievements of 2017 at NSC Sailing Awards Night (Nov. 18th), and our club overall at the December AGM coming soon!
Social Sails and Upriver Races:
- Queen’s Park (Sept 10), 20 Mile Trophy Race (Sept 24): The 2017 Long Distance series concluded with September’s two upriver races, both in awesome sunny warm weather. BYC Queen’s Park witnessed its traditional great turnout, while the NSC 20 Miler two weeks later was a beautiful, record breaking 30C+ day sail. Ten different boats led each of the fleets home, showing just how variable and challenging sailing the river can be. Thanks to Phil Wilcox for championing and managing this great series of interclub upriver race sails.
- End of Series Social (Sept 28), Women’s Sailing Banquet (Oct 2): It was BYC’s turn this year to host both the interclub end of series and women’s sailing socials. Sailors gathered, dined, chatted, and celebrated together the end of a great season of weeknight racing and sailing.
- Turkey Trot & Feast (Oct 9): As we started the season with a blowout club Sailpast, so we ended it with one of our best NSC Turkey Trots ever. Defying the rain and expectations, an outstanding gathering of families and friends in 37 sailing vessels of all types came out to enjoy the warm fall winds and some on and off water fun. Our thanks to Co-Chairs Leo Belleperche, Jenn Holliday (On-shore) and Doug Patterson (On-water) and their assisting teams of volunteers!
Weeknight Racing:
- Fall Series (Aug 21-Sept 28): While the series started with storm threats, mid-way through the weather finally turned and we ended with some great sailing and big turnouts for a great finish to weeknight racing. Similar to Summer, whether it was storm risk or fluky light winds, thanks to some astute RC management, most fleets (excl Dinghies, PHRFI/II) got close to a full complement of series races in.
- Frostbite Series, (October 1, 8, 15th): Late Fall sailing this season was absolutely fantastic with warm temps, sun, and great winds. 34 PHRF/JAM keelboats came out to play with a great turnout from all three clubs until the last Sunday when the forecast was a scary 20 to 40knots. The only thing sadly missing was some enthusiastic Cats, though there was some I14 as a mobile mark to be sailed around at times.
NSC Regattas:
- FANFARE (Sept. 10-12): As forecast, FANFARE returned to its classic relaxed roots while still hosting the Fireball Ontario’s and 505 area Championships. Five fleets of 31 teams including two youth 420s training for CORK Fall came out for a great fall regatta weekend including Saturday’s NSC Pig Roast. Our thanks to this year’s Chair Marie Gendron and PRO Hugh McDowell and the volunteer regatta team. See the Chair’s regatta report.
- Albacore Canadians (Sept. 20-22): Albacores representing 10 clubs across the country competed for the Canadian Championship over 3 days in a tittle event co-hosted by NSC and the Canadian Albacore Association. 19 Crews including 2 Youth teams came from Shelburne NS, South Carolina, London, Parry Sound, Toronto, and Ottawa. Congratulations to NSC Co-Chair Domenic Goodwill, PRO Mario Poirier, and the rest of the regatta team for organising a championship-level regatta in all aspects. See the Chair’s regatta report and results.
- UOttawa Invitational (Oct. 14-15) Though I havn’t seen a regatta report yet, its worth mentioning that the UOttawa Sailing Club in partnership with LTS/NSC held its 4th annual CICSA collegiate regatta in club 420s at NSC in mid-October, the same big wind weekend as the last Frostbite. 7 collegiate teams of 4 sailors each from Ontario and Quebec participated.
Program Participation:
Keeping in mind that the quality of the experience is also important, here’s the final season’s participation numbers for each of the different core areas of the member’s sailing program. The positive interest trends in social sailing events and upriver races continued in 2017, while weeknight racing was solid even with the late start and summer weather. The drop in NSC regatta participation despite a great NOD 2017 is significant though. However 2017 was also a poor year for regattas in the region generally. Not just with the spring/high water on the lakes, but travelling fleet #’s appear to have been down for many popular classes this year.
NSC One Design Race Fleets:
Of possible interest to some are what NSC boat designs are behind the above numbers. Below is a 2017 snapshot for both keelboats and dinghies that sizes our active race fleets relative to recent years. Note roughly a third of NSC racing member boats are unique types, or small in size and are not shown here. Which by inference, also shows the value and importance of Handicap racing for encouraging broader club participation.
I’d like to thank this year’s many Fleet volunteers and organisers and our club staff for their contribution and leadership in making this season’s NSC Sailing Program the solid success it was both on the water and equally off the water.
See you at the NSC Awards night and the AGM. Planning for an even better 2018 NSC season has already begun!
Ross H. Ernst
Fleet Captain 2017
