Miami
,
Florida
,
USA - Paul Davis
Approximately 700 sailors attended the Orange Bowl International Youth Regatta in
Biscayne Bay
over the last 4 days. It was the biggest turnout ever including more than 100 sailors from 23 foreign countries. Biscayne Bay was full of youth sailors competing under the
Miami
's sunny skies. In addition to the Optimists (Green, White, Blue and Red) and the Lasers (4.7, Radial and Full-rig) we expect this was the largest 420 fleet in the history of the regatta.
Hosted by Coral Reef Yacht Club under the leadership of Bill Scheuermann and Wendy Kamilar, the race committee team had over 90 volunteers.
Several medal winning Olympians were at the event led by Magnus Liljedahl, Anna Tunnicliffe, Zach Railey and Kevin Burnham. They coached and acted as mentors for many of the sailors.
The Countries attending (plus the
USA
) were
Argentina
,
Austria,
Bermuda
,
Brazil,
British Virgin Islands, Canada, Cayman Islands, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, France, Great Britain, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Netherlands Antilles, Peru, Puerto Rico, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, US Virgin Islands and Venezuela.
Canadians were represented in all classes; three teams in the Club 420 class, a few Optimist sailors, three sailors in the Laser Radial and 4 full rig Laser Sailors.
Robert Davis
, sailing in his last youth event finished in a strong second place finish leading the Canadian contingent. Luke Lawrence the silver medalist at the 2008 Youth Worlds sailed a strong series to win the fleet. Evert McLaughlin finished seventh, Martin Robitaille 15
th and Ian Wilson 17
th.
The Laser Radial fleet had 110 boats all on one starting line. This event is a pre-qualifier for the
US
trials for the Youth Worlds so the best sailors in the
US
were there vying for a spot. Oliver Corbeil was the best Canadian sailor ending the event with a 10
th place finish to move up to 46
th overall. Samantha Rea was the best placed
Ontario
sailor in this fleet, she finished 54
th and 7
th female. Brenda Bowskill finished 78
th and had some OCS trouble early in the event.
Jacob Chaplin-Sa & Joss Warren showed that they are serious about their bid to win a slot for the Youth Worlds finishing 9th in a very competitive 420 fleet.
This event is the perfect winter training event, it is a very well organized event and
Biscayne Bay
provides great sailing conditions. It is sometimes difficult to get the family to pack up and move to
Florida
for a week over Christmas but when the winter is like it has been in most of
Canada
for the last few weeks 26-28 degrees and great sailing conditions seem like a better alternative.
