Brian Chapman
The Chapman Award is named after Brian Chapman, formerly the owner of the UK Sail Loft in Toronto, a long-time Technical Adviser to the Central Council of PHRF Lake Ontario. He was well respected for his knowledge and dedication to sailing. His advice was integral in their efforts to create and maintain fairness and encourage racing across PHRF-LO waters. Brian believed that a Boat of The Year Award could be determined through a PHRF-LO scoring system. Brian passed away in January 2018.
Two Chapman Awards
In recognition of his support of sailing, PHRF-LO created two awards. One is the CHAPMAN NEW RACER AWARD that recognizes new racers (1 -3 years) who have taken the plunge to discover the fun and comradery of sailboat racing. The Second is the CHAPMAN SEASON CHAMPIONSHIP AWARD, which is open to all PHRF-LO racers.
Championship Regions
The PHFR-LO championship has five regions including Toronto East, Toronto West, Golden Horseshoe, South Shore, Rochester and Eastern. The Eastern region includes clubs in both Canada and the U.S. on the eastern half of Lake Ontario, the St. Lawrence River and Lac Deschênes. Awards are given to the top three finishers in each region plus the overall top three.
Boats with a valid PHRF-LO certificate that compete in recognized PHRF-LO championship events, including Ottawa’s ILD Series of races, are automatically entered and eligible for the Chapman Awards.
Eligibility and Scoring
Points are scored per event per the adapted Chipstead Scoring System. A boat’s Championship score is the total of her best 4 designated event scores. For Lac Deschênes the Pinhey’s Point races and the Queen’s Park races are combined to count as only two races instead of five individual races. The other two ILD series races are treated as individual races, which include the Stony Point and 26 KM races.
The Chipstead scoring can be best described as a weighted scoring system dependent on a boat’s finishing position relative to the number of participants in an individual race. The highest aggregate score is the winner. (See formula below.)
S = Score, N = # of participants, P = Finish position
Winners at NSC
Over the years the Nepean Sailing Club has been well represented with Tim Nason (Peppermint) winning the overall event in 2019. More recently Hugh Morrin (Blue Zulu) and John Rae (J Crüe) have won the Eastern region and placed second overall in 2022 and 2023 respectively out of 500+ boats registered in PHRF-LO. Our strong results are a reflection of our strong and active PHRF fleet.
See also PHRF-LO’s Chapman Award webpage.
Written by John Rae