Youth Champs Results - 29er Nationals Results
Recently my crew Storm Brown and I traveled to the beautiful Columbia River Gorge to compete in the 29er Nationals and then the US Youth Sailing Championships. Expecting a large bit of wind and an even larger amount of competition we prepared ourselves over the course of several weeks to ensure that we were ready. Upon arriving in Oregon we found the wind to be not quite what we expected but no doubt were excited to be so lucky to get to sail in such an incredible venue with so many good sailors.
29er Nationals seemed to go off without a hitch, placing thirteenth in the deep fleet without even sailing the first day as Patrick was competing in Bemis trophy with fellow SDYC team member Scott Sinks. We event won the first race and had many top finishes.
This gave us some momentum going into the Youth Champs just one day later. Though we were blessed with typical Gorge conditions and a more select fleet luck was not really on our side during the Youth Champs. A few things did not go our way including being slightly inhibited by a small hole that was accidentally put into the side of our boat by another competitor. Knowing that we wanted to perform to the best of our ability we continued sailing after a quick duct tape patch and pulled off an eighth to finish the regatta. The experiences of sailing against world class competitors and battling through an unfortunate occurrence built up the character and strength of both my crew and I and we are extremely grateful for the aid provided to us by the comp fund. Without such help we would have never received such valuable lessons that we will no doubt be able to apply in our future sailing and our lives.
Thanks so much for your support,
Patrick Snow (skipper)
Storm Brown (crew)