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GREAT TURNOUT AT 92 NATIONALS

19 boats made the trip to Canandaigua in late June '92 for the US Nationals. Boats came from Texas, Florida, South Carolina as well as the North Eastern states- for a week of Lake sailing in Upstate New York -lots of fluky shifts, some great sailing and some just plain frustrating sailing. With the five races in the Cannonball on the preceding weekend and the seven in the Nationals there was plenty of sailing to justify the long trip sailors made to come to the finger lakes venue for the 92 Nationals. Canandaigua Yacht Club and FD fleet 19 enjoyed hosting their third Nationals and judging from the enthusiastic comments from the visiting boats, everyone had a great time and felt it was well worth the trip. 19 boats makes it the largest FD regatta in North America since the Worlds at Newport, even without nine of the ten teams competing for the Olympic place who had just finished the Trials in Marblehead.

The weather held fine for the regatta with a high pressure area holding over the North East which meant nice sunny days, but light and fluky winds from 0 to 12 mph. There was plenty of gear changing to cope with the different wind strengths and some playing of the windward shore effect when the wind came from the North West. On race days the morning was spent waiting for wind for the first race, and the afternoon race saw some good 10-12 trapeze sailing.

Rob Davies and Bob Palter from Canada were clearly the lead boat with some excellent sailing taking an unbroken series of bullets to win the Regatta with zero points. The next four places could have gone to any of the next four boats of Mark McCrindle/Chris Woodall, Guido Bertocci/Bruno Bertocci, Craig Tapely/Gary Scwanz, Jonathan Gorbold/Anna Gorbold with the final race being the decider. Unfortunately the last race was a real crapshoot with wind puffs and holes, wind direction changes causing the fleet to bunch and change leaders several times. The Race Committee short-ened course and with a wind shift, the last leg turned into a down wind drifter until the last moment when a puff bought the whole fleet to the finish with 10 boats finishing within a boat length. How the Race committee unscrambled the finishing place is remarkable. Mark McCrindle got the gun and with his redress from a 13 to 9th position in the first race claimed second place for the regatta.

Bill and his son Doug Hamilton [16 years old] improved their sailing as they got to know their new [ to them!] Lindsey taking then to a couple of seventh places to win the Carling Fleet trophy. Mark Anderson helmed for his father Dennis into fifth position in the Carling fleet to take the highest placing Junior helm award. Two other juniors also sailed in the regatta -Lisa Wright who crewed for her father, at 12 years old was the youngest competitor, good for you Lisa! Timothy Gorbold [16 years old] helmed a 1968 Hoare with Nora Clements as crew. Its great to see these youngsters sailing and enjoying a challenging boat such as the Dutchman. I had the honor to win the Hibbert Trophy presented to the highest placing "master" [or is it old...salt?] much to the amusement of Don Ver Ploeg and my wife who seemed to enjoy writing about it in our local club newsletter!

We had a great regatta, good company, a fun time on shore and good sailing and racing, we must do it again in '93!
Thanks go to Canandaigua Yacht Club and Fleet 19 for hosting these '92 Nationals.

1992 US NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP RESULTS

Windspeed 6 4 12 6 6 10 6 mph Skipper/Crew Sail 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Score Place Proctor Fleet Davies/Palter KC 302 1 1 1 1 1 1 DNS 0 1 McCrindle/Woodall KC 301 9r DSQ 2 2 5 4 1 39 2 Bertocci/Bertocci US 410 8 2 5 3 4 2 9 43.7 3 Tapley/Schwantz US 288 14 3 3 5 3 5 4 45.1 4 Gorbold/Gorbold K3 67 10 7 4 4 2 3 5 47.7 5 Shenk/Shenk US 1354 2 5 8 13 7 10 2 59 6 VerPloeg/Kalkeniem US 160 5 4 7 8 8 6 3 62.4 7 Wells/Cole US 1435 4 6 6 6 9 12 11 75.1 5 Wrenn/Wrenn US 1427 3 8 12 7 DNF 19 6 87.4 9 Carling Fleet Hamilton/Hamilton US 85 9 9 10 15 10 7 7 88 1 Braun/Osborn US 159 6 10 11 12 11 9 13 94.7 2 Raymond/Raymond US 1443 7 11 9 9 14 13 10 95 3 Cole/Stein US 109 13 15 DNF 11 6 8 12 99.7 4 Anderson/Anderson US 1456 16 14 14 14 13 14 8 113 5 Kolb/Beaver US 100 15 12 13 10 12 15 16 114 6 Gorbold/Clements US 1426 11 13 16 17 16 17 15 124 7 Huppert/Barnard US 102 18 16 15 18 15 11 DNF 129 8 Wright/Wright US 1420 19 17 DNS 16 18 18 14 137 9 Hinge/Hinge US 1335 17 18 17 19 17 16 DNS 140 10
r indicates reinstated

Trapezing Action at Canandaigua Clockwise from top right,
1 Greg Cole and Rob Stein on US 109
2 Rob Davis and Bob Palter, US champs with great form and boat speed.
3 Rob Stein with his patented over arm look 4 Duane Cole (first time trapezing on a Dutchman) crewing for Peter Wells