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After a long drive from San Diego to San Francisco on June 23rd I arrived at the Treasure Island Sailing Center to begin practicing for the 2008 US Youth Sailing Championship hosted by San Francisco Yacht Club. My crew, Hans Henken, and I would be competing in the 29er fleet. We would have two solid days of practice at Treasure Island Sailing Center and then we would be sailing over to SFYC to begin the event. Our practice days the 24th and 25th greeted us with great traditional San Fran breeze, 18 to 22 knots with steep chop. We anticipated that this would be a windy event; the first Youth Champs with breeze in a while.

On the 26th we sailed from Treasure Island all the way across the bay sailing under the backside of Angel Island to the San Francisco Yacht Club located in Belvedere. With 18 to 20 knots of breeze the sail across was very quick. The 27th and 28th were planned clinic days the 29th, 30th, and 1st being the race days. The two days of clinic went off without a hitch. We learned a lot and got more accustom to the windy San Francisco Bay breeze.

The first day of racing, the 29th, saw a steady 15 to 18 knots from the west. The 29er fleet consisted of a very competitive nine-boat fleet. The fleet had four races and we were able to have consistent starts and boat speed to post four 1st places after day one. Day two saw much of the same but with slightly better breeze, 17 to 22 knots straight from the west. We didn’t have quite as good of day as day one. We were able to post a 4, 1, 2, and 2 to remain 6 points ahead of 2nd place.

Finally the last and final day came. It was calling for the most breeze of the whole event. On the 29er course we learned that only three races would be sailed because only 11 races were scheduled for the event. We left the dock at 1130 to make out 1230 start time. We sailed out in a nice 18 knots in a flood current so the water was very flat. Our first race started in a building 18 to 20 knots. For the next two races the breeze just kept building so by the last race it was a nice 22 knots puffing to 25. It was very fun racing, especially the downwind sailing. We were able to post a 2, 3, 3 to hold on to our first place position and win the Youth Champs. At the closing ceremonies I was very proud to accept the 1st place award representing San Diego Yacht Club.

Thanks to The San Francisco Yacht Club and all their great volunteers for putting on such a great event. They did an awesome job with the difficult conditions they had to work with.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 at 12:01 pm and is filed under Competition Fund, Juniors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.