For a late-in-the-season, 21-mile Halloween ocean race, the OYRA’s Junior Waterhouse wasn’t that scary. A week or two earlier and a "blow your brains out breeze" might have cancelled this race.

We’re pretty sure no zombies ate any brains during the race – maybe

afterwards at the bar.  What might have been scary was what Sir Francis Drake would call a "vile and stinking" fog. Visibility was down to seven boat-lengths at the weather mark (Channel Buoy #7, to be rounded to port).

It is amazing how quick a 500-ft tanker can disappear into that stuff.

Still, GPS and an alert crew can make this a kind of contemplative experience. The wind gods made it pretty much a reach out and a reach in and maybe 12 knots in the infrequent puffs. Miffed at being overlooked by the ocean deities, our local South Tower Demon made the current all adverse: flood out - ebb home, and probably ordered up the fog, too.

John Liebenberg’s Always Friday was probably the overall winner. The Antrim 27 was second boat to finish off Richmond YC’s Killer Green buoy (just behind another RYC boat Josh Grass' Summer Moon) in a dying breeze, which probably doomed anyone else’s chances of correcting out. Most boats drifted in to free pizza at RYC between 1500 and 1700.

For John it was a good season: First in Spring series, First in the Fall, First Overall in PHRO2A. John has been racing ocean devotedly since the late 1960s.

See www.yra.org/racing/season_standings.html for more.

- richmond yc