LORC SPRING NEWSLETTER
By Christopher J. Steer
April, 2005

The function of the LORC Executive is to coordinate the racing activities of the Yacht Clubs in the Greater Toronto Area who currently host the Regatta and Offshore Series of races.

Those Clubs are ABYC, QCYC, RCYC, NYC, EYC and PCYC - just six out of the local supply.

Obviously, the objective of LORC should be to produce a program that gets the maximum support from the people who do the actual sailing and that means that the program should be created with their needs and wishes in mind.

It never has been. We've just been through the exercise of trying to rationalize the 2005 schedule and what we emerged with is a hodge podge of events in which much turf has been defended but not one single consideration has been given to producing a season that meets the demands of sailors.

What are those demands? Well, they're fairly simple and they come down to the fact that for a lot of sailors, putting in five days at work followed by two days on the Lake presents difficulties perhaps on the home front but also in the matter of getting crew. These problems are multiplied when our season become a succession of 2-day weekends one following the other with no break in between. What sailors are looking for is a bit of space for other things that they and their families and their crews might like to do with the summer season.

The LORC Executive wishes to arrange precisely that kind of season for 2006 (we had hoped to do it for 2005 but perhaps we didn't start early enough) as part of a program to restore yacht racing as the principal activity of our local Clubs and, towards that end, to make each Club's Open Regatta the signature event of its season.

We envisage regattas with 200+ yachts attending and many of them coming into the Club for the post-race festivities where they will, as in days of yore, present a spectacle that cannot but impress everybody that sees and that will give the clear message that this Club is about sailing.

Can we do it? RCYC and NYC did it for NOOD in 2004 and little Youngstown Yacht Club has been doing it every year for the past 30 odd years. It is not beyond the capabilities of our Clubs and our Members to do the same thing.

Here's how we think the 2006 Sailing Program should be organized as part of this process:

1. We start by shifting the Offshore Series to the two ends of the season when the winds are better for point-to-point racing.

The season starts with the Paul J. Phelan Memorial Race on the Sunday following the RCYC Sailpast and on the following Friday the Susan Hood takes off as ever.

The other three Offshore Events become part of a revived Frostbite Series starting in mid-September and going through to the first week of October. In years gone by, the Frostbite Series made a magnificent ending to our season with the first two races being basically from Toronto to Port Credit and back and the third - PCYC - Frostbite featuring a trip to Oakville and then back to a finish line off PCYC where hot soup and hot buttered rums awaited the happy sailor who may very well have just been snowed on - it happened more than once.

We can call these the Frostbites or we can call them by the names of existing races such as Argosy, Boswell and Summerville. The main thing is to get them out of the centre of the season and leave that clear for the Clubs' Regattas. The Regattas need the Summer weather for their post-race social programs. The Offshores don't generally feature post-race activities or at least not outdoors.

2. Certain events are not within LORC's ambit to move around. They are NOOD, Youngstown and LYRA and no doubt the C&C Owners Regatta and the LO300 are likewise sacrosanct.

We've therefore put these in their accustomed time slots and moved the Regatta Series around them.

3. Which brings us to what the LORC Executive regards as at the very core of our program for the revival of yacht racing in the Greater Toronto Area - the Clubs' Open Regattas.

In our proposed schedule, we've spread these out as much as possible so as to provide owners and crews with recovery time between each regatta - also welcome to the Race Officers and other volunteers who actually run these events for us.

It is part of our proposal that the Club's Open Regatta be the Saturday event with Awards Ceremonies that evening to bring participants into the Club and that the Sunday racing apply only to Season's Championship and the Fleet Championships.

There is a demand out there for Saturday-only regattas and currently most of the people who would like to see that sort of thing are doing the Mid-Week Series at their Clubs and staying away from the 2-day events that we have at the weekend.

Those of us who can't get enough racing will be free to do two days. Those who would prefer to spend Sunday with family and friends doing other things are free to do so. In this as in other fields of endeavour success goes to those who give people what they want rather than telling them what they should want.

We believe that each Club should actively promote its Open Regatta so as, again, to make it the Signature Event of its season. Part of that approach should be to tell the One Design Fleets that they are expected to support the Regatta Series for all Clubs if they expect the Clubs to support the Class Events that they put on.

This isn't a confrontational thing - simply a statement of a very reasonable position. Sometimes expressed as "if you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours". The equipment and personnel that we use are, after all, the Clubs'.

Ultimately both Clubs and Sailors benefit from Open Regattas that are visibly - and financially - successful and it is appropriate that we combine our efforts to make them so.

4. We are looking for Open Regattas that feature 4 courses - 2 Handicap and 2 One Design - on which all boats are racing with other boats/classes with which they are reasonably compatible.

If we achieve that and put 200 boats on the water, then at current LORC Registration Fees, each Club will receive via LORC approximately $8,000 with which to run its Open Regatta.

Four courses will require cooperation between Clubs in the matter of Equipment, Race Officials and Volunteers. Some of this may be on a reciprocal help basis and some may require financial consideration. In either event, there is an adequate budget to attend to all the Clubs' needs and to put on an excellent racing weekend with a first class social program and still leave a contribution to the Club's bottom line.

The LORC Executive feels that the approach and schedule described above answers many of the problems that have contributed to the decline of our sport here and elsewhere. We need to produce a program that gives Owners and their Crews time during the Summer for activities other than racing. Part of that is accomplished by opening up space between the Offshore and Open Regattas and other events that make up our season and part - and we believe it is an important part - is by providing the option for all sailors between a 1-day Open Regatta and a 2-day event. With that in place, the market can decide what sort of program sailors want and there is plenty of room for two schools of thought and levels of enthusiasm to co-exist within the same program.

We who are here in 2005 did not create our Clubs. They were created years before we were born with the stated intention - expressed in all of our Constitutions - of promoting the sport of sailing and of yacht racing and that is a duty that we have inherited.

The LORC Executive believes that it is time to live up to that heritage and create a sailing season strongly based upon our Open Regattas, recognizing that those and other sailing events are the property of the Clubs but also recognizing that the format must be attractive to sailors of all shapes, sizes and levels of talent if we are to get the turnouts that mark the successful regatta.

Time for our Yacht Clubs, whatever other pastimes they may encourage, to be first and foremost about sailing. This is only a start but it is at least that.