Thank you so much once again for all your constant support of my sailing! I just finished my last C420 event of the summer, the C420 South Shore Championships in Long Island, NY, and am now beginning our road trip back home to California.
For the final event of the summer, Dylan and I made the trek back to New York and took a ferry over to Long Island for the C420 South Shore Championships at Sayville YC. Unfortunately, things did not go as planned at the practice day before the event, and after an accident while launching the boat, Dylan found himself in the emergency room with two stitches on his finger. Now that Dylan was unable to sail anymore, we did some last minute scrambling to find a crew for me to sail this event with instead. Luckily, Sophia Pearce was just nearby touring New York before heading home, and was able to change her flights in order to stay out east and sail with me.
The first day of the regatta was a nice medium breeze, but quite shifty and puffy with lots of chop all around the racecourse. Having never skippered a major C420 event yet, and not touched the tiller in a few months, I took the first day to get situated and work out all the kinks, still managing to place two top 10 finishes in the day. Day two was a much steadier building sea breeze, which built to 16kts puffing 19kts by the end of the day. After getting a feel for each other’s sailing and figuring out how to drive the boat again the day before, Sophia and I were ready to start the second day strong. Unfortunately, our bridle was off centered, and since it was spliced in place it was difficult to fix before the start. This resulted in us being late to the first start with an even more off center bridle as I attempted to fix it during a short postponement prior to racing. After limping through the first race, and fixing the bridle after finishing, Sophia and I then proceeded to make up for lost points by winning the second race of the day and placing 5th in the third and final race before they called racing due to too much wind. The last day of the regatta was now gold and silver flights. On that day, we saw a lighter breeze than the day before as the sea breeze was unable to fill in quite as early. We started the day in gold fleet off strong, placing third and fourth in the first two races. With these races we found ourselves in the top ten with points tight all the way up to fifth place, even with our slow start to the regatta as we were figuring everything out. Unfortunately, for the last two races the race committee heavily favored the pin end of the starting line, and in these trickier starts I was slightly out of sync on our accelerations. These tough races left us finishing the regatta in 11th place out of 64 total boats.
Although this regatta did not go even remotely as planned due to unfortunate circumstances on the practice day, thanks to the last minute efforts of Sophia and her mom, I was able to still sail this regatta as a skipper and refresh my skippering skills before heading out to college in a few weeks. Thank you so much again for all your generous support of Dylan and I’s sailing this summer, and although it did not end as we had hoped, these past two months have been an amazing learning experience for Dylan and a great way to wrap up my junior sailing before college by sailing with my brother. We really appreciate all your help in making this summer possible for us!!!