Match racing skipper Lance Fraser produced another stellar display at the recent Oakville Halloween Invitational in Long Island, New York.

Fraser and his Digicel Business Match Racing team-mates placed second at the three-day regatta, losing 1-2 to American Chris Poole (Oakville SapGrads) in a final contested in frigid and gusty northwesterly breezes.

It was the team’s only loss of the event as they reached the final with an unblemished 11-0 record sailing in the Swedish Match 40.

Fraser, 20, has now finished runner-up in the same regatta for the past two years.

Royal Hamilton Amateur Dinghy Club (RHADC) skipper competed with an experienced crew consisting of former Queen’s Sailing Team coaches Max St Maurice and Vaughan Harrison, Canadian national Laser sailor Tom Ramshaw and trimmer Tristan Story.

“We went into the event with a completely new crew and I had only sailed with one of the guys before,” said Fraser. “Luckily, after the training day, we gelled very well together and our boat handling was great which led us to go undefeated into the finals.

“Unfortunately in the finals we raced American Chris Poole and lost. He was our toughest competition of the regatta by far, and we had some of the best and closest match racing that I’ve ever seen at that level with lots of lead changes and penalties throughout the finals.”

Fraser, who competed in last month’s Argo Group Gold Cup in Hamilton Harbor along with Poole, had high expectations going into the regatta.

“Having just come off racing him (Poole) in Bermuda, we were looking for the win and unfortunately he was able to just edge us out in two of the races and take the regatta.

“Under the circumstances it was a great event for us as a new crew. And while it is tough to swallow losing the finals, it will be a great help to our world ranking (90th) and it was an extremely fun weekend of sailing and hard-fought finals.”

Poole also got the better of Fraser during the qualifying round of last month’s Gold Cup.

Fraser’s team were one of two that encountered difficulty avoiding the committee boat during the pre-start of a race. They collided with the committee boat during a luffing battle with Canadian Chantal Hearst for the favoured side of the racetrack in the quarter-finals.

“The committee boat incident was quite interesting,” Fraser said.

“In the final minute or so before the start, we got into a luffing battle with our opponents right next to the committee boat. We were in a great but risky position to win the start and unfortunately when we went start, we were very slow and drifted into the side of the committee boat.

“We had forced our competitor out the other side of the boat though and they were unable to start, so we were able to still win the start and we completed our penalty on the second upwind to take the win.”

Regatta winner Poole also collided with the race committee boat.