Optimist Canadian Championships 2009

Report from Canadian Optimist Championship 2009 in Victoria

The 2009 Canadian Optimist Championship was held in Victoria the last week of August. With excellent conditons for those who love light air, the sailors raced for 5 days straight right outside the yacht club. The parents had excellent views of their sailors from shore as well as from all the parents who brought over their boats for housing.

It was really fun for our team to have 24 racers competing in the fleet of 95 sailors. We were over 25% of the entire event! Most of our sailors attended their first ever Canadian Championship and it was an exceptional experience.


CHAMPIONSHIP FLEET
Our top sailor was Lloyd Lyall in this his first Championship. He sailed an excellent regatta and despite a very unfortunate finish in a race where 50 boats all crossed the line on a reach within 15 seconds, Lloyd used his brilliant tactics to stay in clean air throughout the regatta.

Veteran sailor and retiring after the event, Laura Konitzer, finished 15th and made the national Optimist team. She was hoping for a bit more wind as she just returned from the worlds with the same light air conditions. Laura was an excellent role model for all our Optimist sailors and will stay involved volunteering for the race team program in the fall.

Eric Lyall finished 30th and as one of the youngest in the blue fleet, Eric was impressively fast being able to concentrate throughout the entire regatta. Alex Fritz finished 31st, a bit disappointing as he was hoping for wind to use his strength. Ernesto Rengifo also sailed his last Optimist event as he aged out and is now sailing Laser Radial and had some excellent finishes. Ernesto was outstanding selecting the correct side to go upwind in the current ridden bay.

Sam Atkins and Graham Harney sailed better and better as the event went on. Both put a lot of pressure on themselves, but the learning which came out of this event was so worth while and will take both of them in a great direction in the future. Sam and Graham were 39th and 41st respectively.

Andrew Moreno finished in 48th and sailed some excellent races throughout the series. It is a very long event with 6 days including one day for measurement for our young sailors. It was a great event for growth though.

Jake Cullen and Jim Donaldson who just started on the race team in September finished right beside each other as best friends often do. These two boys have come so far and having been to the training and regatta in San Francisco in June with our team, both Jim and Jake have taken huge steps in their sailing abilities in less than a year.

Ben MacVicar with his excellent attitude and leadership skills came in the 50s. Ben was also hoping for more wind, but the event went better and better for him as the week went by, showing strength in his sailing and personal skills.

Hayley Linton finished 60th in this her first big regatta. She also started last year and has brought a lot of enthusiasm to our team. Connor Black had an excellent regatta and sailed so well. He is a delight on and off the water. Ellie Shaw had a tough time getting of the starting line and getting out to a side. The ping-pong sailing in the middle of a big fleet with very light air was a hard lesson to learn, but nonetheless, an important one she will benefit from later having done at the Canadians.

In 65th place with the same score were Dylan Cochrane and Henrik Moberg-Parker. Dylan is 9 and Henrik is 8 years old. Both boys had raced where they were in top 10 around the first marks and in 3 of the cancelled raced (as the wind died) the boys were often in the top 15. Both loved being part of our huge team and learnt so much from all the older role models on our team.

Michael Mastracci and Robert Tulip were excellent representatives from Royal Van, bringing a fighting attitude and willing to soak in the new skills throughout the entire week.

With only 2 of our sailors retiring this year, we have 22 sailors returning for another year plus a whole new gang starting out! We are hoping to get up to close to 40 sailors on the Optimist team.

GREEN FLEET
The green fleet is for sailors who are new to our sport and where coaching is allowed while racing. Katrina McCallum finished in an impressive 2nd place overall. There were 20 racers. This is her first year and she brought along Julia Ho who finished in 10th place.

Cody and Fraser Buck raced in their first ever regatta and we have two budding stars coming up. Nick Donaldson was the biggest winner of all, he raced his hardest and spent the entire time loving the time on and off the water.

Graham Harney also took home the biggest prize of all, the SPORTSMANSHIP trophy. Graham was the most outstanding role-model for all the younger sailors, including and caring for every new sailor on and off the water. Graham was rewarded with a beautiful trophy and a spray-top. We are very proud that our sailors win on and off the water.

On a different note, after the awards were finished, Rob Douglas who has been coaching these sailors for the past 8 years and has been instrumental in the successes of the Optimist race team members, told all the sailors and their parents that he had decided to move to Comox to pursue his teaching and coaching future. We are so grateful for all the time Rob dedicated to the Royal Van Optimist race team and we will for ever feel the positive impact Rob has had on all the sailors, parents and co-coaches lives. We wish him and his wife Katrina the very best and we are sure he will come back to race of do training camps with us again.


A huge thank you to all the parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts and uncles who helped with the event. We were a great team, the biggest ever!

From the 4 coaches, Rob Douglas, Chris Cowan, Cameron Ho and Tine Moberg-Parker