The Heat in the Cold
It's one thing to talk about who won the 2008 US Youth Sailing Championship, but the most meaningful words I heard out of that regatta came from a coach, Jen Glass. She's a veteran of the whole process, and Jen said, "The best friends I have now came out of sailing these regattas."
Who would have thought?
Emotional moments. Adventure experiences. New, far-away places. Riding the ups and downs in a formative time in life.
While pursuing the mutual passion of sailing.
And whatever else goes along with being young.
The 2008 US Youth National Sailing Championship was hosted by
The San Francisco Yacht Club of Belvedere, California, with racing on the relatively tide-protected shallows of the Olympic Circle, on the eastern reach of San Francisco Bay. By community standards the sailing was summer-cold and medium-windy, improving as the days went along but never completely free of the influence of the wildfires burning at a distance throughout California.
Now a few move on to the Youth Worlds and others move on to the next "other" regatta, all with vivid experiences behind them, all more familiar with cold water and chop, all with a better understanding of the phrase, "Welcome to San Francisco Bay."
The upset: In the Laser fleet the week appeared to belong to Luke Lawrence, out of Florida, except that he was carrying an OCS and could not afford another drop. And he made the mistake of match-racing in the final race and losing that dustup and collecting another OCS. Honors instead to Cam Cullman, American YC.
Radial racing went to Philip Crain (Lakewood YC, Texas) as front runner Chris Barnard (Newport Harbor YC) picked up a 16th in the final race. The top woman finisher was Claire Dennis of the home club.
Simply Solid: In the Club 420, two products of Point Loma High School and the junior programs of San Diego—Tyler Sinks and Briana Provancha—were together seven years after first sharing a 420 as skipper and crew.
Now they're both at Boston College (which was hot this year on the college circuit), and the way they went about winning this event made it clear they would be a good bet to repeat, if called upon. You can hear their thoughts about seven years of sailing and growing HERE
On to Denmark: Judge Ryan and Hans Henken, two more San Diego YC products, won the Nationals and are off to the Worlds. It was a good win, but they would have been pushed harder by the reigning class national champions, locals Max Fraser and David Liebenberg, if David had not been famously seal-slapped a few weeks ago while practicing off Santa Cruz. (He was fully trapped out and the boat was flying when a seal came out of the water ahead of the boat and took out David and his knee.) Liebenberg was doing a Tiger Woods to be out on the boat at all for this regatta. Now go home and heal, guy.
Congratulations to all the volunteers who made it happen—Kimball Livingston
