Page 4 - Jan-Feb 2020

Jamie Keating
Commodore commodore@rcyc.ca
Happy New Year! I hope you enjoyed a peaceful, regenerative holiday season. Despite high water challenges, 2019 was a good year for the RCYC on the water, especially for our competitive sailors as you’ll read below. That said, whether a sailor or a squash’er, a fitness buff or badminton player, a lawn bowler, diner, family member or a swimmer, our Board and Staff are aiming to help make your 2020 even better. As always, we welcome your input.
I’d like to take a few words below to recognize just some of the 2019 results by our Club’s top competitors.
Our Junior Optimist Sailors were on the water in May as RCYC hosted the CODA Sailor and Coach clinic, welcoming over 50 Opti sailors to our Club. Through the year, our Opti Team competed in six local and five additional regattas around the Great Lakes. This culminated in Lindsay Davies and Piper Howell competing at the 2019 Optimist North American Championship in Nassau, Bahamas, and the team of Mattias & Andreas Koechli (aka “Port & Starboard”), Ford and Hudson Amery, representing RCYC at the 2019 South Carolina Optimist 3 x 3 Team Racing Invitational. We are actively looking to build on our program in 2020 with lots more opportunity here.
At the Youth level, Carling Davies and Chris Kitson owned the podium in Laser 4.7 at the North Americans (New Jersey), placing first and second with teammates Annalise Balasubramanian (5) and Jack Schauer (6) close behind. RCYC Sailors Patrick Desrochers and Aidan Ryall finished first in the 29er at the Fruit Bowl regatta at Hudson Yacht Club, Quebec, while Phoebe Tufts and Cate Balasubramanian finished second overall at Lilac Regatta in the C420 and made Gold Fleet at CORK. Then at the CORK International/ Sail Canada Youth Championship, Carling Davies (yes again!) placed top female in the 4.7, while in the 29er Tate Howell placed third overall/top female team in the 29er, to add to her fourth overall at the 29er Canadians. RCYC qualified six sailors to compete in the Radial and 4.7 Worlds (for youth)! A number of RCYC Youth Sailors have been selected to attend the Sail Canada U20 team selection camp in Clearwater, Florida this January—good luck to all! To cap it off in 2019, Colin Davies placed first overall in his final Youth Champs and 53rd at Radial Youth Worlds. Congratulations!
Our Canadian Sailing Team athletes were equally busy. Noah Collinson finished first place at Laser North American’s with Norman Struthers in seventh, and then both competed, mixing their finish order, at the U21 Laser Worlds in Croatia. It’s back and forth for these two! Sam and Will Bonin won the Canadian 49er Championships and then at world-renown Kiel Week (Germany), we had many competitors: Justin Barnes (49er - 41st); Sam/Will Bonin (49er - 65th), Noah Collinson (Laser - 16th), Norman Struthers (Laser - 31st); Galen Richardson/Jake Adair (49er - 67th). At the 49er Junior World Championships in Norway, the team of Galen Richardson/Jake Adair placed 45th in the 49er. Josh Yale finished 49th in the 470 at Jr Worlds, Slovenia. In 49er FX, Mariah Millen registered 15th at the European Championships in Weymouth, 18th at the Tokyo Test event in Enoshima, Japan, and is competing in the Oceania Championships followed by the World Championships both in New Zealand. Awaiting Mariah’s results as I write this.
At the Pan Am Games, Justin Barnes brought home a Bronze Medal in the 49er class and qualified Canada for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo! Mariah Millen placed fourth in the 49erFX, Robert Davis sixth in the Laser class and Olivia Mew was sixth place in the RSX Windsurfer. Steph Devaux-Lovell placed 11th in the Laser Radial (representing St. Lucia) and Thad Lettsome placed 19th in the Laser (representing the BVI’s) RCYC had six athletes at Pan Am!
In the Finn class, our savvy Olympic veteran Tom Ramshaw placed seventh at the Enoshima World Cup Regatta, Japan, 12th at the Europeans in Athens, Greece and has also qualified Canada for the Olympic Games in Tokyo.
All this in addition to some remarkable results in keelboats, most notably first overall at the San Diego Invitational (led by Andy Roy, and including Club Members Scott Collinson, Fraser Howell, Andrew Van Nostrand), and a hard-fought fourth place at the venerable New York Yacht Club Invitational Cup (which RCYC has won twice in the past). All these accomplished sailors are setting up a very deep bench for our 2020 Canada’s Cup team in September. Stay tuned for more news on our upcoming 2020 Festival of Sailing in September.
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JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2020 • KWASIND
COMMODORE MESSAGE