JibeTalk

Spring Laser Regatta and Youth Match Racing

Here are two events that have registrations due this week.

The first is for the Spring Laser Regatta at American YC, Rye NY, on this Saturday, June 18. This is an open event for any Laser Standard or Radial sailor, regardless of age. The NOR and entry form are available on the AYC website.

The second is the Oyster Bay Youth Match Racing Clinegatta (clinic and regatta) at Oakcliff Sailing Center on July 14-17. Entries are due this week (one month in advance) from sailors 16 – 22 years old. For details see the Oakcliff website.

 

Fairfield County CT high school teams wrap up spring season

It was an action-packed May for Fairfield County high school sailors, with league championships in both fleet and team racing taking place over the last few weeks.

Nine schools competed for the fleet race championship at the 12^th annual Fairfield Cup on May 14^th.  Pequot Yacht Club played host to the event that featured racing in three classes and four divisions: two divisions of C420, and one each for Laser full rig and Laser Radial.

Sailors were greeted by initial light air that built to an 8-12 knot southeasterly throughout the course of the day.

The Brunswick School swept the competition, placing first in both Laser fleets as well as the “B” division of the 420 fleet. 

Brunswick drew upon depth and experience to field a competitive advantage in the Laser fleets in particular – Fairfield Prep coach Jay Lipp noted, “many of the Brunswick sailors sail Lasers over the summer.”

Brunswick School sailors

Fairfield Prep and Staples High School notched respective second and third place finishes in the overall standings at the regatta.

Team race championships took place the following week on May 21^st at the 12^th annual Fairfield County Gold Cup Regatta, hosted by Indian Harbor Yacht Club and Greenwich High School. Six schools vied for the title after having qualified for the regatta in previous dual matches over the course of the spring.

In a steady 8-12 knot easterly that made for near-perfect team racing conditions, sailors completed a total of thirty races in a double round robin followed by a sail-off between the resulting top two schools.

Darien High School narrowly edged out Staples High School in the final round, capturing the championship with a 10-2 win-loss record. Staples posted eight wins and four losses, while Fairfield Prep trailed closely behind in third place with a 7-3 record.

Lipp said that clean boathandling and starting-line savvy were key factors in the top teams’ successes.

“Darien’s tactics, mark traps, and passbacks were flawless,” said Lipp. “Even though they were not undefeated, they did not make big mistakes.”

Though the high school season draws to a close, many of these sailors will be back on the water this upcoming summer.  Lipp estimates that over 75% of the Fairfield County league sailors compete in the JSA, while the rest sail or instruct in community sailing programs. 

US Sailing Summer Road Show wants to visit you

 
 

The inaugural US Sailing Summer Road Show will be making stops at sailing organizations from Maine to Maryland to participate in a variety of events including regattas, junior clinics, and community outreach programs, adult learn to sail seminars, and other sailing events.

The Summer Road Show team will be on the road from Memorial Day (May 30) through Labor Day (Sept. 5).

Here are a few ways US Sailing's Road Show can participate in your organizations’s events and programs:

• Regatta or Site Visit
  US Sailing will stop by your regatta or event and provide a fun interactive experience to promote sailing and share information about some of its products and services. 
• Clinics
  The US Sailing Road Show team can host a one day/afternoon clinic for youth programs at Yacht Clubs and community sailing centers, or help out during an already established clinic.
• Youth Program or Sailing School
  The US Sailing Road Show team would love to help instruct at your Junior Program or Sailing School for the day. Their Level 1 certified Instructors are happy to help out and coach for a day at your program or sailing school.

If you'd like to have the Road Show team visit your event,  to give it more exposure or just a little support, please submit your invitation to the team. All clubs and community sailing centers located from New England to the Mid-Atlantic are eligible.

High School Sailing: New England Singlehanded Championship (Healy Trophy)

Congratulations to the top four sailors in each division, who qualified for the 2011 National Single-handed Championships (Cressy trophy), to be held October 30-31 at St. Petersburg Yacht Club.  50 New England high school Laser sailors competed in the NESSA single-handed championships (Healy trophy) September 26 at Duxbury Maritime Academy. 

2011 Cressy Qualifiers:
 - Full Rig:  1st place - Lucas Adams (Portsmouth Abbey)  2nd place - Dan Nickerson (The Williams School) 3rd place - Philip Lozier (Portsmouth Abbey) 4th place - Ian Ikeda (Duxbury)
 - Radial Rig: 1st place - Sarah Stubbs (Greenwich Academy) 2nd place - OJ O'Connell (East Lyme High School) 3rd place - Pearson Potts (St. Georges) 4th place - Catherine Shanahan (Portsmouth Abbey)

Other Long Island Sound sailors included James Barry-6th Laser (Brunswick School), Tim Entwistle-7th Laser (Robert E. Fitch High School), John LaBossiere-6th Radial (Brunswick School) and James Harvey-20th Radial (Brunswick School).

For full results please click here. 

Sailing After the Season's End

As the summer begins to wind down and junior sailors begin to look towards the start of the next school year and catch up on reading lists, we begin to look fondly back at a summer of sailing. But one of the great things about the sailing community in LIS is that junior sailing does not end after the JSA programs wind down. A lot of our junior sailors continue to sail throughout the year at events all over the country (and the world) and sail on their high school teams. 

We would love to hear from you as you keep competing and swap your swimsuit for a drysuit. Over the summer we have been sharing stories of our local sailors competing at events everywhere from Florida to Israel in all types of boats. We want to keep sharing these stories after the season ends, and we need your help. If you're going to an interesting event, or if you want to tell us about practicing with your team or what you're doing to get ready for next summer please drop us a line. 

High School Sailing - California Rules

From Sailing Anarchy

The nation’s 20 top high school double-handed teams met over the weekend to compete for their national championship (the Mallory Trophy) at Indian Harbor Yacht Club (Greenwich CT).

Friday was registration and practice day. Most teams took advantage of the opportunity to get out in very benign conditions. The Race Committee ran eight short up-and-back courses in a 6-8 knot southerly. Most teams attempted to avoid the practice race jinx by racing upwind and back but refusing to actually cross the finish line. And most teams knew the conditions being raced in Friday were unlikely to be representative of racing to come.

Commanders’ Weather forecast for Saturday called for unsettled conditions early preceding the arrival of the cold front followed by a rapid acceleration in wind strength with the breeze expected to top out at over 40 knots. Knowing the opportunities to get in racing was going to limited, the RC attempted a first race in 4-6 knots out of the SSE. Regrettably, the breeze shut down completely on the final leg and with an ebb tide, the competitors were unable to make progress downwind and the race had to be abandoned.

The re-sail of Race 1 was undertaken a short while later in a light southerly. The first beat was reasonably clean but soon it became apparent that the leading edge of the front was about to reach the race course and with it, a westerly breeze. The RC put in place a change of course. And here is where controversy ensued. Given the large wind shift and the fact that boats were soon reaching to the leeward gate, the mark boats had a limited amount of time to execute a rather dramatic change. High school rules do not require the use of the “C” flag and the RC was discouraged from using it as a courtesy signal. Instead, the rules require that no mark be moved while boats are on that leg of the course. While to some, the two mark boats seemed to successfully deploy and retrieve their respective marks prior to the first boat’s rounding of the leeward mark, the judges felt there was enough doubt and enough potential confusion that upon completion of the race, the race was abandoned. Naturally, a redress request was filed.

The top couple of finishers argued that the intention was clear to them and while the old mark was maybe not fully out of the water as they rounded the leeward gate, it was in the process of being pulled. Ultimately, the protest committee determined that the RC had deployed the new mark in time but had not lifted the old mark prior to the first boat being on the affected leg and while it broke procedural rules, it also erred by abandoning the race after boats had finished without considering the consequences for all boats as required by RRS 32.1. It was subsequently determined that rounding and finishing places were not materially altered over the course of the changed leg and the race was reinstated. Naturally enough, this led to a new redress request to re-throw out the race which was heard and denied.

So with only two A division races sailed on Saturday, racing began on Sunday with Commanders’ forecasting breezes likely to top 40 knots and the need to get in four more races to constitute a series. Fortunately, the host club was able to move enough of its member boats from its mooring field that relatively protected racing could be run inside the harbor. But in order to get any semblance of something approaching a reasonably long course, the signal boat was backed up against the leeward shore and the windward mark tucked in just shy of the channel and under the windward shore. By being so close to shore, and being a generally NW breeze, the conditions, while not full survival 100% of the time, were definitely challenging.

Lots of flat out hiking one moment to crews inside the boat the next (particularly during the offset leg). Lots of auto tacks and near capsizes to windward. And even though the moored boats had been removed, there were still lots of mooring balls and winter sticks to contend with. The competitors coped well with the various challenges and 18 races were run. And for the record... the signal boat, which was at the farthest point from the windward shore, recorded sustained periods of 22 – 25 knots with peaks at the start and end of racing just shy of 30 knots.

The 18 races sailed on Sunday resulted in a nice 20 race series. California schools took the top three places and placed four teams in the top six. On top was Cathedral Catholic from San Diego with 111 points (12 points better than their nearest competitor). Key to the Don’s success was being the only team to card fewer that five finishes in the bottom half of the fleet.

Article thanks to Johnathan Nye the Indian Harbor YC PRO and photo thanks to PhotoBoat    See also the SailGroove video coverage.

Top ten results:

1 Cathedral Catholic San Diego, CA
2 Point Loma HS San Diego, CA
3 Newport Harbor HS Newport, CA
4 Lake Forest HS Lake Forest, IL
5 Broadneck HS Annapolis, MD
6 Coronado HS Coronado, CA
7 Severn HS Severn Park, MD
8 Antilles School St. Thomas VI
9 Sarasota HS Sarasota, FL
10 Darien HS Darien, CT

Nation's best high school sailors come to Greenwich CT

Last summer, the Town of Greenwich CT and the Indian Harbor Yacht Club had the distinct pleasure of hosting a select group of young sailors for the US Sailing Youth Championships.

On May 8 and 9, an even more accomplished group of young sailors have descended on the Greenwich shoreline to compete for the High School National Doublehanded Championship Mallory Trophy.

Sailing from New England are the winners of the O'Day Trophy Regatta, also held in Greenwich two weeks ago - Portsmouth Abbey, Portsmouth, RI; St. Georges School, Middletown, RI; The Hotchkiss School, Lakeville; and Darien High School, Darien CT.

Keep up with the action by checking out the links to the results, PhotoBoat shots and SailGroove videos at the IHYC website and click on Regattas.  

John Glynn wrote an extensive story for the Greenwich Time newspaper that described the trophy as named for Indian Harbor Yacht Club Commodore Clifford D. Mallory. Mallory was Commodore of IHYC in 1930 and this year marks the 80th anniversary of the regatta. Mallory created the event that was originally sailed in Atlantic class sloops. The trophy, named in his honor, is high school sailing's oldest trophy and among its most sought after.

Twenty teams have qualified, through various county, state, and regional elimination events, for the right to compete for the Mallory Trophy. They are: From the MidAtlantic -- Broadneck High, Annapolis, Md.; Norfolk Collegiate School, Norfolk, Va.; Severn School, Annapolis, Md. From the Midwest -- Lake Forest High, Lake Forest, Ill.; Loyola Academy, Wilmette, ill.. From New England -- Portsmouth Abbey, Portsmouth, RI; St. Georges School, Middletown, RI; The Hotchkiss School, Lakeville; Darien HS, Darien CT. From the Northwest -- North Kitsap, Poulsbo, Wa. From the Pacific Coast -- Coronado HS, Coronado, Calif.; Point Loma High, San Diego; The Branson School, Ross, Calif., Newport Harbor High, Newport Beach, Calif.; Cathedral Catholic, San Diego. From the South Atlantic -- Antilles School, St. Thomas, Virgin Islands; Sarasota High, Sarasota, Fla.; St. Thomas Aquinas High, Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; H.B. Plant High, Tampa, Fla. And from the South -- Lake Travis High, Lakeway, Texas. 

See the full story as it appeared in the Greenwich Time 

 

New England High School Champs at Indian Harbor YC

The 2010 NESSA O ‘Day Championship was held yesterday at Indian Harbor Yacht Club in Greenwich, CT.  6 Races were sailed in each division on a windward/leeward X 2 Race Course, winds were out of the NW 8 to 12 knots. 

Congratulations to Portsmouth Abbey, Hotchkiss, St. Georges and Darien HS who placed in that order. Portsmouth Abbey wins their 2nd O ‘Day Championship in a row and all four schools will represent NESSA May 8 and 9th right back at IHYC for the National Championship Mallory Trophy regatta.

Special thanks to Jonathan Nye at IHYC and his crew who ran races and the day for NESSA and also to Ron Hopkins and Dan Davis for judging the event.

Good luck to those schools advancing to the Nationals.   

   from Andrew Nugnes, President NESSA (Barnstable High School Sailing)

 

Teams from the JSALIS area included Darien HS, Fairfield Ludlowe HS and Green Farms Academy.  Our congrats to Olivia Crane and her crew whose stellar perfomance kept Darien HS in the game.

For details see the full results