2002 12th District Championships Results
July 12-14, 2002
Seneca Yacht Club
Geneva, New York

Report by Rick Burgess

The 12th District Championship for 2002 was hosted by Seneca Yacht Club on Lake Seneca, in the beautiful Finger Lakes region of New York. Lake Seneca is a wonderful place to sail and the folks at Seneca Yacht Club are to be commended for a job, well done.

The 12th district includes both Canadian and American contestants, of which a number of Canadians were vying for a berth on their Olympic sailing team. The Canadians who were racing included Bill Abbott who represented Canada in the Olympics twice in the Soling class. Ted Haines and Larry Scott represented Canada in the Olympics in the Tempest class. Hans Fogh won two Olympic medals, silver in the Flying Dutchman and bronze in the Soling. So racing in this year's 12th District was very competitive and exciting.

Because Lake Seneca experiences southerly thermals each morning in the summer, the racing began every day at 9:00 AM. This worked out fine as we got in two races on both Friday and Saturday. Then on Sunday, we sailed the last race and everyone had plenty of time to pack up and enjoy the trophy presentation before getting an early start on the road home.

If I had known I would be writing this report, I would have taken copious notes after each race. As a result, I don't remember the play-by-play. I can tell you that the sailing was tricky, but as usual, the best sailors found a way to get out in front and stay there. I remember in the third race, at the weather mark, Kevin Murphy and John Finch had a commanding lead over the entire fleet. Kevin went hard right and after much prompting from his very able crew, he finally tacked. When they got to the mark they were eight feet short of making it to which Kevin said to John "I told you we should have gone further". I also remember that in the fourth race Rick Dhein rounded the leeward mark in little or no wind. Then for some inexplicable reason, only he picked up a nice little breeze and just sailed away from the entire fleet. Good job Rick.
Ted Haines was leading and Bill Abbott was in second place going into the last race. Bill won the hard-fought race and as a result was awarded his first Blue Star. A well-deserved victory Bill!

We thank the members of the Seneca Yacht Club who really went out of their way to make sailing there stress-free, fun, and easy.

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