89 boats registers, 87 boats started and 

65 boats finished a classic Susan Hood Trophy Race. This  may be one of the slowest races in its almost 60 year history; with only two boats in PHRF and one boat in IRC recording an elapsed finishing time under 24 hours and the rest of the race finishing under 27 hours elapsed time. You can be sure that it produced some interesting results on corrected time.

Unlike previous races that started under light and variable wind conditions, the wind in year's race did not pick up at either turning mark or anywhere in between. No significant storms, not many clouds to speak of either. Constantly shifting the wind provided an excellent challenge that kept everyone on their toes looking for an advantage on the fleet.

Due to the late finishing times we regret not being able to have a flag ceremony, but I know that everyone stopping into the club enjoyed the great Yacht Dogs provided by Sperry Top-Sider. Most boats did not provision for Saturday night dinners let alone lunches, which made a shoreline meal like this extra special.

Our plan is to hand out the division flags at this year's Lake Ontario 300 Post Race ceremony on Tuesday July 15th

Many pictures have already been posted on the LOOR Facebook page capturing the essence of this special race.

Congratulations to all our flag winners, division winners and trophy winners. Results can be seen on Yacht Scoring.

Congratulations to this year's Susan Hood Trophy Race winner Out of Bounds, an O'Day 322 from Hamilton Bay Sailing Club skippered by Terry Wagg. We asked Terry to give us a quick re-cap of the race and his crew:

My wife Pam and I met through the Hamilton Bay Sailing Club about 10 years ago. Three years ago we bought our boat in Milford CT, sailed it home and renamed it 'Out of Bounds' which seemed to capture our lives, pretty much living just outside the norm. It's an O'Day 322 but nothing special about it as far as racing trim goes, it's mostly a cruiser.
As for our crew, we added another keen sailing couple, Kevin and Cheryl Soldaat who along with our super adventurer friend, Adam Mitchell, round out the group who were there from the beginning to bring the boat home. The last on the crew is Mike Thomlinson who we all know from HBSC. Mike is the only guy I know who spends more time on the water than I do, mostly racing Sharks. Mike is also the only member of our crew who had any experience in the Susan Hood and also the person responsible for convincing me that we should enter. (this wasn't a tough task for him)
Our experience with this race? None whatsoever. In fact, this was the first time we have ever raced with 'Out of Bounds' but that's not to say that we are new to sailing it to its full potential. Our racing experience comes entirely from Albacore sailing. Pam and I as well as Kevin and Cheryl have placed well in provincial and national regattas over the last ten years. Currently most of our racing is confined to club racing within HBSC where we are the reigning champions. The Susan Hood was an opportunity to branch out into the Lake with larger boats. When dinghy racing it's all about speed and we easily converted sail trim tactics to the larger boat.
For a brief explanation about our race, like all sailing regatta's it's about mark rounding. We knew going into this we had the second highest PHRF rating which told me that we just have to be in with the fleet and we are doing well. Friday night, like everyone else, was a bit of a drift to the mark. As we rounded the tower we took room on two other boats and looking back was a sea of red and green, we were in definitely in the middle of the pack. The dawn brought more stable winds and we were able to maintain a reasonable speed. At the Niagara mark we again ducked inside two boats and at this time we were checking the numbers and could tell that there were at least 4 boats in our class behind us. We managed to keep up on them and even pull away a little until the wind pretty much died completely. We have a fat wing keel that works very well on a close reach in good wind but with barely a puff it doesn't exactly slice through the water. The boats we had passed or at least kept up with slowly moved on ahead of us. We were not thinking so much of winning at this time, it was more of hope that we would actually finish before Sunday morning. I recall at one time the ETA on the GPS was 11am. on Sunday. We did manage to keep the boat steadily moving and eventually crossed the finish line but now there were only 3 boats behind us. I didn't realize just how close we were in time to the fleet until I read the results on Sunday morning. This brought huge excitement amongst the crew, we could barely believe it.
I have attached a pic of myself and crew psyching ourselves up a couple hours before the race on Friday. Cheryl is unfortunately taking the picture and not in it.

Cheers!
Terry.

The Out of Bounds crew

2014 SUSAN HOOD TROPHY WINNERS

LOSHRS Race # 1 Course Race