When it comes to junior sailing from around the area, Greenwich was the place to be this past weekend, as the Junior Sailing Association of Long Island Sound hosted its annual Optimist Championships.
“This is really an awesome event,” said event chairman Gregg Clark. “I think the kids had fun, there was good competition and plus they got some education and they will walk away with some nice prizes as well.”
This year, Greenwich’s Riverside Yacht Club opened its doors to the junior sailing community for the Optimist Championships, hosting over 30 clubs and around 155 competitors for the two-day event on Long Island Sound.
“This event was great for Riverside,” said Clark. “We are a sailing club and have an amazing junior sailing program. Sailing is a lifelong sports, and a club like Riverside, with our ability to give back to juniors and be able to give them a venue to come have an event like this, is great.”
And the host club had its fair share of success, as over 10 sailors qualified to compete at the championships and several of them took top finishes.
“This regatta, basically everybody has to qualify to get here, so it’s the top 30 percent of sailors in regattas over the summer,” said Nicky Souter, director of sailing at Riverside Yacht Club. “So it’s quite the privilege for these sailors to be selected to come here and race. It’s really hard.”
Max Anker, 13, of Riverside Yacht Club, ended the event as the overall champion. He recorded three first place finishes, took second place once and also had a ninth place finish.
“I am really proud of him,” Souter said. “He’s been sailing all over the world. In the summer he’s been going down to Argentina and Europe doing a lot of regattas. He’s one of our most promising sailors. He did amazing out there.
Thankfully for Anker, he was able to erase that ninth place finish, as only four races counted.
Going into Monday’s race, Anker was trailing Michelle Lahrkamp from American Yacht Club in Rye, N.Y. and needed a big finish Monday.
The outcome as simple. If Anker won the race on Monday, he would be champion. If Lahrkamp won, she would claim gold. However it was Anker that came away with the top prize.
“It was a relief,” Anker said. “I was really nervous because I could have had it or it could have changed. Right out of the gates I was first and I was focused on beating Michelle. It was a lot of fun. I enjoyed it. The first race was definitely the hardest race of the regatta. It started off as a great race and I was second right out of the gates again, but then there was an 180-degree wind shift. It was a down wind and I lost six boats because of that.”
Another solid performance came from Riverside in the White Fleet division, as Benjamin Sheppard,10, took the gold overall with a score of 62.
“My first race was my best race,” Sheppard said. “I was eighth out of every one. The rest of the day I got between 10th and 20th. This feels pretty good. There were a lot of tough competitors and a lot of advanced people. Last year I was second, so I didn’t do as good, but it was still pretty good.”
Other local athletes fared well during the event. Belle Haven picked up a silver during the championships, as Leyton Borcherding took second in the Blue Fleet and finished with a score of 14, three points away from the top spot and American Yacht Club’s Jacqueline Quirke.
In the White Fleet division, William Clark ended the event fifth with a total of 64, two spots away from the division champion and one away from entering a tie for second. His best finish was a seventh place spot in the final race of the event.
Sunday was unique in Greenwich for the sailors. August brings some challenges to the sailing community, as little to no wind is a common occurrence. Monday was a perfect example, as only one race was able able to take place in the afternoon due to the severe lack of wind.
However on Sunday, the weather couldn’t have been more perfect, as winds 10 to 12 knots throughout the day helped the event start on time, the courses were long and challenging and the competitors had a blast.
With racing four times on Sunday, getting that extra race in on Monday was crucial. With five total races on the day, all the competitors were able to get a throw-away race, as only four races count towards the final standings.
“That gives everybody one bad race that they can not count towards their final score,” Clark said. “Every competitor got to count their four best scores.”
For Clark, the importance is growing about preserving the environment Long Island Sound. That’s where SoundWaters stepped in, housing a tent throughout the championships to talk about ways to protect the Sound, while enjoying some friendly competition on its waters.
“This is a clean regatta, which means we ran this as a gold level clean regatta,” Clark said. “There’s 25 best practices and I think we implemented 21 of those 25 best practices to say that this is going to be a regatta that leaves near zero environmental footprint. And it’s educational for the kids.”
SoundWaters’ Vice Pres-ident of Development, Greg Bilionis, was on-hand to discuss the importance of keeping the Sound clean and looking its best.
“We do a lot of rigorous science education, but we’re also moving towards sailing education,” Bilionis said. “We are helping people that are on the Sound every day, like I am, understand what are the small things that we can do that really don’t make an impact on my life, but collectively make a really big difference out there. We just want to educate the next generation of sailors.”
