Local Sailor Makes Good At SIN!

(Nanaimo, B.C.) This last weekend in the Nanaimo outer harbour, the Snake Island Nanaimo (SIN) Regatta was held for the 12th time with 47 boats competing. Registrants came from various yacht clubs on Vancouver Island, the Lower Mainland, and the United States: Bellingham, Blaine, Edmonds in Washington, and even one registrant from the Transpac Yacht Club of Los Angeles.

Despite all the great talent coming from around the Pacific Northwest, local sailor Bruce McQuade won the overall title in a Cal 25 that he has owned for less than a year. Although Bruce learned to sail in summer camps in Montreal, Quebec, he has not owned a boat in over a decade. He and his girlfriend recently bought the boat to do a bit of cruising and thought it would be fun to enter the regatta.

SIN 2004 Chairman, Keith Climenhaga, was greatly pleased with the outcome and felt that the quality of the racing was exceptional. “You can’t get much better racing when no division was won by more than three points and that the tie breaking rule had to be used to determine the top half place finishes in five of the six divisions. The Thunderbird division was so tight that the tie for first place had to be determined by the obscure rule which allots it to the boat with best finishes in the final races.”

Results for the overall was determined by the best average result and not allowing any throw outs. The results for overall were: 1st Bruce McQuade (Cal 25 - Aquarius), 2nd Ken Lott (Thunderbird - Boreas), 3rd George Compton (Thunderbird – Nahanni). First in the individual divisions were: Div. 1Multihulls, Kim Alfreds (F31 – Cheekee Monkey); Div. 2 PHRF, Bill Allan (Cape Cod Fast 40 – Lawndart); Div. 3 PHRF, Rob Nairne (Martin 24-1 – Vinter); Div. 4 PHRF, Bruce McQuade (Cal 25 – Aquarius); Div. 5 Martin 242, Alex Foley ( Treachery); Div. 6 Thunderbird, Ken Lott (Boreas).

Attached are the complete results or they can be viewed on the SIN 2004 website. Pictures of the regatta are available from Cim MacDonald (cimmac@shaw.ca) or from Nanaimo’s M242 website.

The SIN committee looks forward to another great regatta that promises to be even better than this year’s in the summer of 2006.