BERMUDA'S Ben Wicks finished fourth overall in the Canadian Yachting Association (CYA) SailWest 2002 Regatta.

The annual regatta was held in the heart of the Canadian prairies from August 3-5 in Meota, Saskatchewan and was an open event for several dinghy classes. This year, it also doubled as the venue for the Western Canadian Laser Championship.

Sailing the Olympic class Laser, Ben finished as top junior, in a fleet of 32 adult and youth skippers from all parts of Canada.

The SailWest organizers had planned for nine races over three days but settled for seven after light wind on Sunday permitted only a single race. This race turned out, in fact, to be Ben's worst showing. After several postponements (lack of wind), Wicks was speed-testing, upwind from the starting line, with one of his past coaches and fellow contestant. Quite to their surprise, the Race Committee decided to start the race without much warning.

Both sailors had to sail back and cross the starting line - minutes after the gun had fired. Despite this, Ben managed to claw his way back to an eighth-place finish ... only to later discover that it had been recorded as a DNS (Did Not Start) because he hadn't started within the designated time limit after the gun.

This resulted in an automatic 33-point penalty that became his one and only "drop" for this regatta. Except for this, Ben ended up just short of a top-three result, by delivering a very consistent set of finishes (7-4-4-6-33-3-4).

Early on, prairie sailors learn to expect any and all kinds of sailing conditions - often during a single race. Ben experienced this, first-hand.

While Sunday was a drifter, Monday, the last day of the championship, was a honker with both races sailed in 25-30 knots.

His many months in the gym finally paid off as he found he delivered his best finishes of the regatta (third and fourth, respectively), grinding down most of the competition in the process.

The most encouraging news this week came directly from one of the organisers. Many North American Laser regattas can utilize an age-based handicap system called AlsScore. SailWest's organisers pointed out that, had this regatta used the AlsScore system (it didn't), at 16 years of age, Ben would have been declared the overall regatta winner.

And who was the champion? None other than Ben's training partner this summer, Mike Leigh from Vancouver. One of North America's most promising sailors, though too old to compete as a youth at SailWest, Mike in fact finished fourth overall at this year's Volvo ISAF Youth Worlds (three points shy of a silver medal) as well as seventh overall at the US Laser National Championship.

Ben's final regatta of the summer comes next week at CORK, in Kingston Ontario. The second largest regatta in the world, CORK can see 100 entries in both the Laser and Laser Radial classes alone.