Laser Worlds 2009

A strong team of Royal Van sailors qualified for the mens Senior Worlds Championships.

Mike Leigh, Luke Ramsay, Abe Torchinsky, Andy Wong, Ricardo Montemayor and Alex Heinzman.

The regatta was preluded by ten days of training , with upward of a hundred competitors doing "rabbit" starts. fantastic training, especially for the Jr members of the group.

The event was started in perfect sunshine and a eighteen knot sea breeze. Two races were sailed and the results were good for Mike and a few of the others.

The second day dawned with a dense fog, we went out and tried racing thruout the day but in the end one race was held that remained and the other was tossed in a protest , all in all the day was a near loss for most.

The Saturday morning we saw a solid 18 plus knots of breeze and a schedule of three races.
All the money was on the line on this day. The fleet was to be split into Gold , Silver and Bronze.

Mike sailed very well and entered the gold fleet portion of the event in 7th, Luke and Abe had touger days and were in the middle of silver fleet, Andy, Alex and Rick were at their first worlds and were in the bronze fleet.

After the final qualifying day we had to store the boats away indoors in anticipation of a hurricane, (that never amounted to much). Three 75 minute qualifying races with a few hours of putting boats away made for some very tired sailors by days end.

The Sunday was alot of waiting for the hurracane to blow thru then monday was more waiting on the water for wind that never appeared.

Finnally we were back to racing on the Tuesday with 3 good races, (10-14 kts) and then 2 races on the final day in 14 to 18 kts.
Both of these days we sailed out thru the fog to find our race course.

The final scores showed the top sailors being at the top and the rest falling in line. This is , in my opinion, the tougest sailing regatta on the planet and the sailor that wins it must be skilled and fit in every possible way.

Mike Leigh had a very solid event finishing 10th, Luke finished 6th and Abe 10th in silver , Rick, Alex and Andy gained valuable experience for their next wortlds.

A sucessful event that was tough because we had plenty of delays and our share of fog, but not unusual.

next year the worlds are in the UK and the team is off to more events to try and qualify.

Al