Last month, my skipper, Anton Schmid, and I went to Roger Williams University in Bristol, RI to take part in the 2023 29er Nationals and the US Sailing Youth Championships.
The 29er Nationals was a three day regatta that we were using as a warm-up event for the Youth Championships the following week as the Youth Champs was the Youth World Qualifier. Each day of the regatta, we were met with different conditions due to a large storm system moving through the area. The racing was very tight at the top of the fleet. Everyone was all over the place in the results. In the end, it was between two boats and it came down to the last race. We ended up beating the second place boat and secured our win at the 2023 29er Nationals.
We had 3 days of training in between the 29er Nationals and the Youth Champs. They were filled with building a better understanding of how the current affected the race course. On the "outside" course, sailed by Hog Island, there were definite advantages to sailing in or avoiding the current.
The Youth Championship started with Day 1 filled with a lot of wind. We had three races that were all pretty similar. We used our boat speed to put ourselves out in the front and were able to stay there each race. We finished with three bullets. That filled us with confidence going into the next day of racing. We had a rough start on Day 2 with the first two races not going the way that we wanted. We were able to turn it around for the last 2 races, getting a 2 and 1 to finish the day. We went into Day 3 with 4 points out from first and knew what we had to do. We gave it our all and had another good day on the water and were able to become tied for first place. The last day was stressful, it would decide who would represent the US in the Youth World Championship. The first race we lost our lane off of the start and had to split with the boat that we were tied with. At that point, we were on damage control and tried to limit the amount of points that we would lose to the second place boat. In the end, we only lost one boat to them, which was not the end of the world. The last race we made another mistake and were on the back foot. We tried our best to catch up to the second place team and got close, but it was too late. They ended up winning the second race of the day. It was bittersweet, we didn’t win the qualification, but we did still get second at the US Sailing Youth Championship after winning the Nationals.
Thank you to San Diego Yacht Club and HPYS for all of the support.