We (Kevin Cason/skipper and and Holland Vierling/crew) recently attended our 3rd US Sailing Youth Championship, this year located in Bristol, Rhode Island. This was a super fun regatta for us. So cool to see our growth as a team over the past 3 Youth Championship races. I(Holland) showed up sleepy after a long redeye flight, and immediately ran into the US Sailing Coaches -Phil and Rosie. They let me jump in their coach boat on the way to another race. An hour later I was competing in the Bridge to Bridge race from Newport to Bristol, RI on a Wingfoil - and I ended up placing 1st for Wingfoil! What an amazing experience!

The pre Youth Champs Clinic was awesome. We met up with some old friends and some new from Hong Kong, Mexico, Canada, St. Croix and all over the US. Very cool to see the fleet growing in the US! In the 29er class annual meeting, we were excited to hear about some new changes and action being taken to support the 29er fleet nationally as well. This year was also great because we had several new SDYC teams at the event (Wesley Larue/Sean Kaseberg, Julia Stewart/ Ben Simpson, Olympia and Maribel Barelli) and loved hanging out at the dorm with them in between sailing times. Noah Nyehuis was our regatta coach and it was really nice to have our local coach on the water with us in Bristol!

The first day of the regatta was really windy and this was a struggle for us. The launch was rough and about half the boats dropped out with winds at 26-28! They decided to move the course for day one which made racing a little more of a struggle for us, but we were just grateful that we could handle the wind at all. Unfortunately we sustained damage to our blades and our brand new boat when we hit a rock in the middle of the bay. We were able to hustle to make repairs with the help of a few parents - a true team effort. The second day the conditions were favorable/stable and we were able to gain in placement with a few 1st place finishes. The last day our plan was to climb up to first overall from our 2nd place standing but it was really light up until 2:45 and we were only able to get one race in. We spent a few hours in the water on the course swimming and having fun to make the best of the lack of wind. Throughout the regatta we were battling for first place with the Lamm brothers. In the end we landed in 2nd. We had a great time learning and competing and can't wait for next year!

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