Sailing Section News Dec 4/09 - by David Cook

Hi VMSS Sailors and South Island and Saltspring Island IOM Sailors,

It's the 1st Sunday of the month so a group of us keeners will be going to Beaver Lake for a on-water-start-time of 1 o'clock. The weather forecast is for cold temps and possibly ssssnow. If BigWaveDave.ca knows anything about forecasting, bring your number 3 (C) rigs. He's got 30 knots from the NE 6m to 9pm. Gee, maybe I should have been spending the last couple of months building my no. 3 rig instead of spending all this time designing my own IOM.

I'd like to start a causal winter series with no results keeping but wagering of marbles is encouraged. If you don't have any, ask Jan to lend you some He's got lots (of mine and he bought some too). It looks like Jan, Robb, Barry and myself will be there. If it's too cold or ugly, sailing may be cut short and off to a nearby coffee shop to get warmed up.

I'd like to welcome and introduce Liam and Ian Law to Victoria's IOM sailing thanks to Martin Herbert. The Law brothers are friends of Martin's, my guess from their Calgary days. The guys shared Martin's 'Nell' 2 weeks ago at Beaver Lake during the final event of the Summer & Fall Series. It's too bad VMSS had only 3 members registered. Congrats to Steve Meredith for winning the Club Championship. Watching you pass me on the first race just before the finish line for 2nd place was impressive. Attached is a photo of Steve's Kiwi-built Victory. Dave and Jenny Taylor had a craft fair, Robb was out of town, Peter was/is recovering from surgery and Jan was working in the morning. Turns out with our 1 hour postponement due to absolutely no wind, Jan could have made it. Thanks Eric for letting me know that you're more a woos than me. Turns out we had great winds and hardly any rain at all.

A month or two ago Robb had an idea of having a New Years Day Regatta. I like the idea and think calling it something like the Frozen Assets Regatta makes sense. How about Robb and anyone else, who's interested? Robb: Since it was your bright idea, you can make up the rules (if any).

On a more regional look at things, I've been communicating with Lawrie, John and Barry and have drafted a very tentative 2010 racing schedule. Things are on hold until Kingston decides on which weekend in September the Canadian Championships will be held on. The Spring Series will probably start in late February or March which Barry is working on finalizing dates.

Regarding how many series and event the area can handle, I think dividing the Summer & Fall Series into 2 separate series makes sense. This would allow sailors with limited time available to be more competitive in any given series. Maybe we could have a regional annual ranking taking 2 of the 3 series, the championship event usually held at Saltspring in early. Another idea being bashed around is having a Pacific Northwest Series traveling to the lower mainland, Washington and/or Oregon. There are IOMs spread out all over the Pacific NW and it would be great if we can coordinate things a little. Lawrie, Barry and I are working on this and hopefully something works out.

Crazy as we are, hope to see you on Sunday at 1pm.

Cheers

David Cook