Warroad Race History from Hank Henderson

A little history. This is the 31^st Warroad race. The first trip was in Dominion Day 1977. There were three boats. George Kent, Jim Kern, and Lyle Little and their wives. I think that there may have been a few others on board. They were all three sailing brand new O’Day 27 footers. They cruised down from Kenora to Oak Island. Ginny and I were in our Paceship West Wind 24 and we met them at Oak Island and lead them to our dock in Warroad. Great time.

Although that was no race any time that two sailboats are in sight of each other that is a race. However with the three new boats chasing our old charter boat Paceship we had to keep doubling back to them so that they would not lose sight of us. We did not escort them back to Oak Island.

In 1978 there were eleven boats (some reports claim twelve) and they cruised to Oak Island and then raced to Warroad. On lay day we set up a 27 mile triangle from Warroad to Gull Rock to Buffalo Point and back to the finish at Warroad. The third day they raced back to Oak Island and then cruised to Kenora. However some boats made a week of it.

Also the in 1978 we set up another race which we called the KWIT race. Kenora to Warroad International team race. Here we combined the time of the first boat with that of the last and so on down the line. The best overall time of the two boats won. There was a Mayor's trophy and several others.

For the KWIT race I made arrangements with US Customs that I would check in all of the boats at my dock and call in the numbers to the Warroad port. On the third day the Canada customs officer from Sprague came to my dock and checked all of the boats into Canada from here.

Of course at some point the government officials caught on to what we were up to and stopped that so that was the only straight through race we could have. That race was on Labor Day week end of 1978. There were I think 23 sail boats in that race and they were accompanied by several powerboats.

From 1979 on the race was always on Dominion Day. 1979 I think that we had 44 boats in all but there were a number of power boats which accompanied.

After several years the Golfers started to dominate the fleet and the 27 mile lay day race was changed to an Olympic race just off shore at Warroad. It got down to only two boats for that race and we then started just having the Golf day.

There have been some really drifters through the years with shortened courses and there have been come real howling gales. Some years there was damage to several boats and ripped sails from the heavy weather but they still just keep on coming.

Now it is sort of settled down to just about the same boats and crews every year and most are golfers. Great bunch and great event and Ginny and I have enjoyed the whole thirty one years of hosting such a great bunch of people. As long as we can we will be here to help out. We have recruited and trained Stuart Michelson and he is doing a good job on it. Unfortunately his job has him scheduled out of town this year but he still got things all organized including the coast guard auxiliary will be out there in case of need. Stuart has taught them how to recover grounded keel boats.

There are a lot of stories about this event.