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2004
Season Summary
by Michael Ehnis
Photo Contributions by Brian Hawkins and Fritz Wagner
This year began with
the first race committee meeting January 11. In comparison to some previous
years gatherings the three hours seemed to go very quickly. The most discussed
subject was the calendar and who would be racing and when. The Flying
Scots had a meeting the day prior and unanimously voted that Sundays would
be a better day for their fleet to race. After a very courteous discussion,
it was decided to split the weekend with Interlake's on Saturday and Flying
Scot's on Sunday. In addition it was agreed to 1) run weekend races back-to-back
to shorten the over-all time spent on the water and 2) have the other
fleet run the races so everyone could participate more with their own
fleet.
Well, as
we later found out, this plan had one small flaw: the DNR. The person
in charge at this governmental office saw two weekend days as more traffic
on the lake, thus denying our request for both days. Even with our permit
"king" Tom on the job, there wasn’t any persuading the
DNR rep to allow for both days (is Tom loosing his charm?). In true
government fashion, this decision was declared 9 days prior to the start
of the Gold series, which prompted an emergency meeting by chairman
Steve Wiseman. After much discussion it was decided that racing for
the time being would be conducted on Sunday’s since there was
a healthy number of Scots signed up.
On April
25th the annual Race Rules Seminar was held at the club and this year’s
presentation was well prepared by Tom Ehman and Colleen Hughes. Both
showed their thoroughness with props (Tom woke up the crowd with his
mark setting demo by throwing an anchor into a bucket of water) and
a slick PowerPoint presentation put together by Colleen complete with
sound effects (to the delight of one Tyler Cathey).
Tuesday
night racing brought out some of the best racing of the year. Those
meek and mild men and woman of the Sunfish fleet were typically anything
but this, once a race was started. Can you say protest hearing? For
the first time in who can remember there was an actual protest on a
Tuesday (check the history books). Since the Sunfish fleet was only
resurrected in the past 5 years it was the first for this fleet since
those wild and wacky days of the ‘70’s. In this Michael
Ehnis protested Dan Lyons for barging at the committee boat. This necessitated
the evening management plus Tom Ehman to come back to have a hearing
two days later when all the parties involved could meet and sort out
what took place. And who says protests are a thing of the past???
Two of
the most interesting small boat races occurred in mid to late August.
After considerable debate on one night it was decided that we would
race (after considerable delay) as a flag four houses to the west started
flapping. This and Tom’s obscure analysis that the wind at 7:00
PM was going to fill in and stay steady all night (we should have gotten
that one in writing) was just the recipe for a long, long night of floating.
Who will ever forget Tyler cackling away on his pontoon boat as everyone
tried to find air in mirror conditions? Funny (it was not) how the wind
filled in after the race and it started raining. The following week
featured marks to starboard and plenty of hollering particularly from
the Sunfish sailors. All the green on the course board had a lot of
sailors seeing "red" over their fellow fleet members. Also
it should be noted that every scheduled Tuesday race was successfully
started. Too bad we don't have detailed record because this must have
been a first at PYC not canceling a race.
One of
the fun events of the summer was the small boat pizza party at the end
of June. After the evening races, Commodore Felicia Cathey arranged
to have Dave Moody and her husband Tyler stop at the club and pick up
all the evening sailors in their pontoon boats. With every kind of pizza
imaginable, the group proceeded to the middle of the lake to talk sailing
and other fun social topics. A better evening could not have been chosen
as clear skies and a full moon only added to the overall enjoyment of
the evening.
The Interlake
Nationals were held at North Camp Yacht Club and a contingent of sailors
were present from the club. Participating in the Junior Nationals was
Kirsten Petro sailing Interlake 1341 (Tyler’s boat). Deciding
at the last minute that Tyler’s boat was a little on the dirty
side (which may possibly slow her down) Kirsten tipped it over and gave
it a nice clean bath. After doing a lot of bailing by hand, her little
episode presented the opportunity to learn new boat parts like the word
“bailer” (though how new this was to her is debatable since
here Laser has one).
On the
women’s side of things, Barb Johnson and Colleen Hughes participated
in the Women’s Nationals to defend their title. With coach Tom
Ehman in tow, all the pre-race talk was focused on dinners and breakfasts
(someone in this group is quite preoccupied with their stomach). The
women, like the juniors, battled windy, wavy conditions. Unfortunately,
there was only one race leaving them no opportunity to battle it out
over a greater number of races. Still, they took second and are looking
forward to next time.
For the
main event, PYC sent two boats down with Clark Chapin competing in the
Championship division and Jack Coleman in the Challenger. Both did the
club proud. Jack finished second out of 14 boats. Clark posted an 11th
overall. He somehow missed getting into the top ten by one point. What
makes this a head scratchier is that the 10th place boat Jim Davis (no
relation to the PYC member and Flying Scot sailor), didn’t even
race the final three races due to damage incurred in race #4 of the
7 race event. It’s not often you miss out to a guy sailing fast
when he isn’t even sailing!!
On June 26-27 three Flying Scot skippers and crews ventured to Crescent
Sail Club in Grosse Point for Wife-Husband
Nationals. Jim and Marie Davis competed in the Championship Division
while Brian and Suzy Hawkins and Todd and Suzanne Moore competed in
the Challenger Division. In addition, Brook Smith and Dick Barker acted
(like Hollywood pro's might I add) as official judges for the event.
Kudos to Brian and Suzy Hawkins for winning the Challenger event.
In the
theme of off the lake regattas, five enthusiastic Scot skippers and
their crews trekked North for the annual Crystal
Ball Regatta at the Crystal Sail Club August 14-15. The teams of
Todd and Suzanne Moore, Brian and Suzy Hawkins, Jim and Marie Davis
(and kids), Fritz Wagner and Greg Schymik, and Michael Ehnis and Cassandra
Fletcher found some good racing on Saturday. The highlight of the day
was Brain and Michael duking it out in race #2 with Brian getting a
very generous windpattern by going left as he got the bullet. At the
end of day 1 there was a three way tie for third which included Michael
and Brain. This is the way things stayed as Sunday’s racing brought
mirror like conditions. The PYC contingent was forced to play a competitive
game of “wizard” where eventually Greg Schymik was crowned
grand master of the card game. Saturday night brought the group together
at the local hotel Hot Tub. Management had a couple of “small
discussions” with our party leader Brian regarding bottles/cans/glass
of open spirits. We did find that the men’s locker room is a good
place to stash a cooler out of the eye of watchful security cameras.
On August
28, the annual Progressive
Dinner found the group indulging in a terrific menu of food. The
event started at the club with appetizers. Though the weather was gray
and on the cool side, everyone decided that riding on either Tyler Cathy’s
or Todd Moore’s pontoon boat as preferable. Yes we did exceed
capacity, but there were no titanic moments.
The first
stop was the home of the Moore’s who featured the salad bar of
salad bars. There was everything imaginable available to dress up your
lettuce. The second stop for lobster/steak/ corn on the cob was the
Moody’s. It was a "cook for yourself adventure" which
was very challenging for the steak lovers with such hot coals (watch
it go from rare to well done in a blink of an eye). The evening concluded
with a stop at the Terhune's (who originally hosted this event again
in 1998 after it was put on hiatus during the mid 1980’s) where
a wonderful ice cream bar awaited the crew. Of course their wonderful
log cabin house made for a terrific place to entertain the troops. Speaking
of entertainment, the dynamic duo (no not Batman and Robin) of Todd
and Suzanne Moore (guitar/vocals and vocals respectively) sang sailor
type songs including “Spanish Ladies” and “Fiddlers
Green” which had the group joining in on the fun. This “live”
event was, unfortunately, not recorded (how else are we going to get
these two a recording contract?). The music was so enjoyable to the
hosts that Donna was able to make her reclining chair go beyond its
normal position. I guess she enjoys looking at the ceiling while listening
to live music.
September
brought the annual fall regatta’s to the club. After a down right
uneventful summer weather wise (lots of days in the 70’s and a
lot of light air days), it was pretty much more of the same for these
three weekends. The No Sweat was moved to the first part of the month
and it appeared this helped increase participation. The Interlake and
Flying Scot's decided to split their regattas, the Hot to Trot and Hot
Scot, to separate weekends for the first time in more than 25 years
to help alleviate race management concerns. This appeared to be a good
move since both events were highly attended.
The sailing
season concluded with the Annual
Awards Dinner. This year 52 people came on November 6 to recognize
the outstanding achievements of their fellow sailors. A new twist was
added to the voting this year as only one person, Kirsten Petro knew
the results beforehand making it a more exciting event for everyone.
The evening
had many highlights. Tyler Cathey was in charge of presenting the special
Recognition
Awards except for the sportsmanship award and the coaching award
which he and Felica won for their effort in helping Kirsten “K-Deva”
Petro all season long and loaning her their boat at the Interlake Junior
Nationals. Clark Chapin received the Thomas Lott award for all his outstanding
contributions to PYC as well as his participation as US Sailing representative,
current Interlake class chief measurer and former Interlake Michigan
Vice-President. He thanked his long time crew and father Gordon for
providing him with all the opportunities to be apart of the PYC program
The author
of this webpage was put in charge of awarding the Scot Sportsmanship
award for which he had a little fun with recipient Brian Hawkins. The
story was told of a phone conversation that Brian had with the author
two days prior to the last race regarding his strategy to pull off a
win. Since there was a three way dog fight between the author him, and
Dan O’Haver he wanted to make sure that I wouldn’t have
any problem if he “covered “ me for the entire race since
he could not change his standing with Dan. The author had no problem
with this if in fact Mr. Hawkins could actually do it. Of course, it
never happened due to Brian’s position on the start line and being
covered by the fleet (which was not part of the plan). In effort to
fulfill Brian’s missed opportunity, the author awarded him with
the opportunity to cover him with a “blanket” (to the chuckles
of all those in attendance) as he received his plaque.
Yours truly
was completely surprised by being honored Sailor of the Year. So much
so that when he got up in front of the audience he said that he was
speechless, to which his crew Cassandra Fletcher replied “That’s
a first”. After collecting himself, the author thanked everyone
including those people who have helped him through the years: Rick Lyons,
Forest Rogers and Tom Ehman. The author made a particular point of singling
out Marilyn Poulter who was so influential in getting him started with
the racing program at PYC and working with him to become a better sailor.
There wasn’t a dry eye in the house after this short speech (of
course if you believe this you also believe that Portage Lake is void
of wind shifts).
The evening
concluded with the annual Broken Rudder Award. At one point it looked
as though we may not have a worthy recipient since the year went relatively
smooth and uneventful. But just when we thought we might not pass out
the award, along came this year’s heir to the crown, Greg Schymik
making this a no brainier. On a Thursday night near the end of the season,
prior to the race (oh about 15 minutes prior) while sailing in the starting
area, many of us heard what sounded like a cannon. Was there an accident
on shore? Was this a new starting gun by the RC? No it was none of these.
Off in the distance with no one else in sight (except for Mr. Schymik
and one other boat of course) was Greg loosing track of his whereabouts
on port tack and meeting up with starboard tacking Joe Smyk. It was
a T-Bone classic!! From afar is looked as though it might have been
the Scot fleets designated crunchier Fritz Wagner. How could that be?
Well, Greg was using an old suit of Fritz’s sails and both he
and Greg’s boats are identical in color (also Fritz had his boat
repainted so naturally Murphy’s law was sure to kick in was it
not?). Both men demonstrated a good sense of humor in handling this
eye- popping situation.
2004 was
a fun and exciting time at PYC. There were many challenges to the club
and the fleets. We look forward to expanding our program and continuing
its success in 2005.
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