Rahn family at the top in Pas De Deux

Peter Rahn and his family, from BYC, had a superb day to end their racing season for 2007. They were first across the finish line in this fun pursuit race, beating out some impressive sailors and boats. It was a good wind for Sharks but also a good wind for many of the boats out racing that day. Accompanying that good wind was a fair bit of rain, but that didn't dampen the competitors' spirits who turned out in high numbers for the season's last hurrah. I asked Peter how he whooped so many boats, finishing with a good length of a lead. They left dock early, surveyed the course, and sailed upriver to Baie D'Urfe to check out the location and depth of water around the distant mark. The Pas de Deux is a distance race up, down, and all over Lac St. Louis, with marks well beyond vision. It is also a "Pursuit" handicap race with the slowest boats starting first, and successively faster boats getting successively later start times. Since the Shark is scratch boat leading the fleet out, you better know where the heck you are going! What Peter was too modest to mention is that you cannot make the slightest mistake, and must sail flawlessly if you are too hold off the others sailing Sharks, Tanzers, Etchells, and an array of big, fast boats.

On Ambitious, our Tanzer 22, we had some unintended excitement, overpowered with the #1 genny. On one occasion, we attempted to tighten its halyard, but dropped it instead, which bagged the sail and brought the boat into a circle. Then we did another unintended "penalty turn" when I hopped up on the coaming, doing the dinghy thing with my bum partly over the water, and lost my balance and the mainsheet during a gust. Whoops, around we went. Ah well, it's all good, and 6th place is respectable!

The fun part of this great close to the season is that the clubs compete by giving points to sailors for both their finish and how many from each club are on the water. This gives each club a combined score, and the highest goes to PCYC. The host club, PCYC, served up plenty of hot food and cold beer post race, making for a great way to end the season. A good turn out of about 21 boats confirms that.