US Sailing Men's Championship Report

Below is Paul's report. Good going guys.

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Chip Till, Chris Calhoun, and I had the great experience of sailing in the US Sailing Mens Championships this past weekend. We were fortunate enough to win the Area D elimination event at College of Charleston and were representing the Carolina Yacht Club. The finals were sailed in Ultimate 20s which are a 20 foot sportboat (bowsprit and asymmetric kite), and were able to practice ahead of time thanks to Steve Rose from Columbia Sailing Club.

In the mix of competitors were plenty of different class National and North American champions, college sailing All Americans, and so on. When you primarily sail in one class in one region, it'd easy to forget that there are plenty of other classes spread around the country who have different sailors leading them, and this is one event where many of the best people from different classes come mix it up. I had set pretty reasonable (goal was mid fleet) expectations going into this, and was not disappointed by the competition.

The venue (Lake Norman, NC) provided a variety of tough conditions starting out the lightest on Friday(2-7 knots). We started out slowly, and were able to hang in the good pressure but I just wasn't able to transition through the lulls and holes that would seemingly appear out of nowhere. On Saturday we had a little more breeze, maybe 10 knots, and it started to become clearer that there were periodic oscillations of about 30-50 degrees working their way down the course. Things would go from looking great to looking bad to looking great, and we were still sailing a little bit in a reactive mode, but we had some good looks and lead at a couple of marks. By Sunday, with the breeze coming up a little more (6-15), we were more in our element and attacking the fleet in shifts and going for pressure instead of trying to avoid light spots.

While we started out slowly, we had the third best day of the fleet on Sunday, and other teams were congratulating us on sailing well. After 11 races we were only 7 points out of our goal of mid-fleet, and averaged only 2 places behind the second place team. Only the winning team avoided a finish in the bottom half of the fleet, and every team had a finish in the top three. I was just happy to have lead a couple of races and been in the mix.

I could not have done this event without my awesome crew and friends Chip Till and Chris Calhoun, nor without the support of the Carolina Yacht Club, SAYRA, and US Sailing's Area D.