Lac St. Louis Champs: beginning indicators

Dusk falls, and the breeze takes its leave at the conclusion of a Good Neighbours' race.


Here we are near the end of July. That is roughly halfway through the 2007 sailing season. Montreal Sailing is curious. Who are the titans at the wide end of Lac St. Louis for 2007? Pierre gave us an idea of how it is shaping up on Lake of Two Mountains. So it seems a good time to take stock of the racing on LSL thus far. I found it difficult to figure out who’s on top of dinghy sailing. The keelboat classes seem to have more revealing results posted. Who are the skips getting the guns and flags so far? Lets begin with the top 3 statistics of the larger fleets in the Good Neighbours' Series A.

PHRF 1&2

1. Dick Steffen
2. Pierre Jasmin
3. Michel Litée

PHRF 3

1. Tof Nicoll-Griffith
2. George Stedman
3. Jake Fichten

White Sail

1. John Macleod
2. Helmut Langeder
3. Jon Austen

In Sailweek, excellent racing was to be had by good turn outs in each race, but relatively few boats competed in all or most of the series. The results come from a pretty intensive week, which not many managed to sail completely: PCYC Annual Regatta, then 3 consecutive weeknights, followed by the BYC Annual Regatta. Here is a listing of individual race winners:

PHRF 1&2

• Pierre Jasmin
• Luc Gloutney
• Uhu
  

PHRF 3

• George Stedman
• Jake Fichten
• Ralph Stocek

White Sail

• Helmut Langeder
• Stargazer XX
• Moonraker
• Le Loup Marin
  

In PHRF 3, our boat Ambitious was hot and cold with a bullet, but DFLs too. We excel in the light stuff, and come apart as the wind picks up. Jin Frati has given our eager ears some advice to improve control of the boat. We have made some changes, but have a long ways to go. There are better boats in the fleet that didn’t get a gun, but placed high.

Ketchup, skippered by George Stedman is having the most consistently top places this summer. During Sailweek, Ketchup won the PCYC Annual, the evening race July 12^th, and took 2^nd on the other evening and 3^rd at the BYC Annual. This is the boat to beat! Looking at the individual races it’s clear Tof Nicoll-Griffith’s Crisis team is also tough to keep up with. The two Sharks don’t always end up on top, with other Sharks and Tanzers mixing it up. Nevertheless, odds are they are most frequently the main threat on the water.

Another angle on who’s hot is to see who placed at the top in Series A, as well as who got the bullets during Sailweek. That would give a respectful nod to

• Jake Fichten
• Pierre Jasmin
• George Stedman
• Helmut Langeder

I’ll also look out for Tof who missed the odd race here and there, and Rob Levy once things are more indicative in the Fireballs. So, there you have it, the Montreal Sailing early nods for LSL Champs. Perhaps some time, we can see them all square off against each other, and the L2M competitors! In the meantime, we’ll check in from time to time, and see who the shifts favour!