Competitors came from as far away as Campbell River, Vancouver, Nanaimo and Sidney when the Schooner Cove Yacht Club held its 25th anniversary of the Schooner Cove Yacht Club annual Race Around the Rocks regatta.
The event, which included a new attraction, the Round Lasqueti Race, attracted 32 boats for racing in the Strait of Georgia off Schooner Cove on June 2 and 3.
Below is a portion of club spokesperson Richard Hudson’s report from the deck of Sea Lion.
“Thirteen boats registered for the inaugural Round Lasqueti race in Race Around the rocks. All showed up for the start split into two divisions.
Aboard Sea Lion we chose the pin end and had a clean on time start in a NW six to 10-knot breeze. The fleet split left to right about evenly and given the rating spread began to spread out with the right side being favoured as far as Gerald Island.
There were many descriptive words in the weather report but “light” and “variable” seemed to rule the day.
For most of the afternoon we were working with two to four knots of breeze with the occasional puff just ahead of a rain cell.
Amazing Grace, Cu Na Mara, Shingebiss and Turicum maintained their formation and worked to the right, feeling out the zephyrs in the late afternoon, while Ion and Sea Lion now some distance back stayed to the left of mid stream.
Just after the dining hour a southerly began to build. We could see the boats begin to heel one by one, most putting in a port tack to get into the new wind before flipping over to starboard on the apparent layline for the finish.
Final results: Division 1: first place: Bill Allen, LawnDart, NYC, second place: Bill Jones, Ion, NYC, thirdrd place: Neal Berger, Shingebiss, SCYC. Division 2: first place: Ken Lott, Sea Lion, SCYC, second place: Terry Waters, Tantivy II, NYC, third place: Ron Turner, Blue Shift, SNSYC.
Silent Motion, it turned out, had earlier gone over a rock rather than around it, despite having collectively on board over 120 years experience in these waters.
That was cause for skipper Wayne Stremel to receive the 2012 Ballenas Cup.”