Well it certainly has been a busy and interesting summer for our team.

Many classes have concluded their World and European Championships, and our sailors have been scattered all over places like Ireland, Estonia, Italy, Denmark, and France.  People are out there battling against the best in the world; which is exactly what they need to be doing.

As you can imagine it is some tough sledding, but we have also had a few very strong performances.  Our whole 470 team has made some great strides this year, capped by Stu McNay and Dave Hughes performance at the 470 World Championships. They finished 6th out of 117 boats in this hyper-competitive class; a fantastic result early in the quad.

On the Para-side, we sent a full team to the IFDS Worlds, including several new combinations.  Newcomers to the Skud Class Ryan Porteous and Cindy Walker sailed a very consistent series to finish 4th; another fantastic result that bodes well for our Para program in the coming years. With several world championships still to come later in 2013 (49er/FX/Laser/Radial) more good information will be gleaned about where are sailors are at and our emphasis for the winter training.

Another milestone this summer was the unveiling of the new high performance fleets at the Oakcliff Sailing Center.  Many team members and Olympians were on hand for this historic event, which was immediately followed by the US Nationals for Nacra 17’s, 49er’s, and 49er FX.  There was very competitive racing in all the classes (largely due to the incredible resource of these new fleets of boats), and new National Champions were Brad Funk/Trevor Burd in 49er, Paris Henken/Helena Scutt in FX, and our Puerto Rican friends and training partners Enrique Figueroa/Carla Malatrasi in the Nacra.

Charlie McKee
High Performance Director