The trip to A Coruna, Spain for the 2017 Snipe Worlds was quite the adventure. It stared with cancelled flights, lost luggage, gear and sails as well as a missed connection. We ended up arriving a day late to the event which eliminated our only full practice day. This was quite unfortunate as the charter boat needed a ton of work to be ready, some of which was not discovered until after the first day of racing. For the first time ever, the Worlds was broken up into Silver and Gold fleets which was disappointing. 85 Snipes on one line is bold but not that big of a deal for most venues. The first two days had 5 qualifying races, 3 on day one and two on day two, mostly in big breeze. Day one was tough as we had no ability to point, had not had enough throw in the jib halyard due to some poor engineering and had not enough time in the new boat. Four hours working on the boat in the evening of Day 1 addressed many of our bigger issues and Day 2 was more enjoyable. We qualified for Silver and had 6 more races over the next three days. Your place from the qualifiers was pulled into the finals and was counted as your first race and was not discardable.
On September 16-17, San Diego Yacht Club (SDYC) hosted the 2017 Finn Pacific Coast Championship. With 22 Finns racing, this event became the largest Finn regatta (aside from Nationals or Olympic Regattas) in North America in years. In September 2018, SDYC will host the Finn North American Masters Championship on the same waters that Finn sailors raced on this past weekend.
SDYC hosted the 14th annual Beneteau Cup on September 9 & 10. It was a flawless weekend for 37 Benetaus to be both out on the water and celebrating back at the club after racing according to the event organizers Rick Day and Barrett Canfield.
Similar to the past few years, South Coast Yachts and UK Sails provided a classroom training session at SDYC on Friday night. The Friday night training is important because it sets the tone for the race- the sailors are there to have fun, but they will have help along the way as they learn how to use their boat in a more competitive way. Following the educational component, competitors raced windward-leeward courses in Coronado Roads on Saturday followed by a random leg race in San Diego Bay on Sunday.
The 2017 Zhik 29er World Championships were held very close to home this year in Long Beach. Alamitos Bay Yacht Club hosted sailors from 16 countries and 130 boats gathered on the beach. Close to the event, I was presented with an opportunity to sail with a girl from New Zealand named Greta Stewart.
After getting all of the last minute logistics organized in order to sail with Greta, the boat measured in and we were ready to go for the event. Greta arrived the night of the Opening Ceremony and just before the first day of racing. Greta and I had the chance to sail for for just a bit inside the harbor that evening.
On August 7th, Jack Plavan and I had the opportunity to travel to Toms River, New Jersey to compete in Bemis, the U.S Sailing Junior Doublehanded Championship. To get to this point, Jack and I had to get top two in the Area Qualifier, the Junior Olympics hosted by San Diego Yacht Club in July. We were able to place second after the three day event and we were excited to be on our way to New Jersey.
This was our first time going to this regatta and we were very excited for the unique aspects of this race. What makes this regatta unique is that everyone is provided a new C420 charter for the week, evening out the playing field. Also, since this was an event you have to qualify for, they limit the registration to only twenty teams. When we arrived, we quickly learned that we were the SoCal kids that the East coast kids had not seen before, but they knew that we came from a great program and had great sailors compete in this event from our yacht club before. Although seeing other sailors in their “Opti National Team” jackets was intimidating, we were confident in the training we had done at home.