12 Meter Yachts in Connecticut This Week

Junior sailors who aspire to crewing on big boats will want to take advantage of opportunities to see the classic 12 Meter yachts that will be sailing in Greenwich and Bridgeport this week.

Most of these yachts are chartered out of their home port in Newport RI, but there is one local boat berthed in Greenwich CT, America II.

If you have the opportunity to stop by the docks or get out on the water you'll be witness to the kind of racing that originated on Long Island Sound in the late 1950s when the post-World War II America's Cup events were relaunched using the 12 Meter class. Get a foretaste of the action with this video from on board Gleam during Nantucket Race Week 2007 - http://nantucket.plumtv.com/videos/ride_gleam

- The Connecticut Maritime Association, with members from the commercial shipping industry, will hold its Third Annual 12 Meter Regatta at Indian Harbor Yacht Club late morning to mid afternoon on Friday September 28. See the details at http://www.cmaconnect.com/2007Regattaflyer.pdf and photos at http://www.photoboat.com/

- The Belle Haven Club's Challenge Cup on Saturday September 29 is a fund raiser for Shake-a-Leg whose focus is to help individuals with disabilities develop their full potentials. See video at http://www.t2p.tv/guide/bhcc07.php

- The 12 Meter Challenge Cup, a friendly rivalry among various Connecticut clubs, will be held Sunday September 30. Hosted by last year's winner, Pequot Yacht Club, the yachts will be berthed at Captains Cove Marina in Bridgeport and will race in the area off Black Rock Harbor near Bell "2"; harbor start is at 11 am. See details at http://www.pequotyc.com/ click on Open Regattas.

Former JSALIS junior sailor on Mini-Transat 6.50

The Mini Transat 6.50, for singlehanded boats no bigger than 6.50 meters in length, started from Fort Boyard, near La Rochelle France, September 16. Alex MeVay, a former junior sailor from JSALIS, is among the 89 entrants.

Alex grew up sailing at Riverside Yacht Club in Riverside CT. He sailed Optimists, Laser Radials and Lasers competing in club and JSALIS events. He won many trophies in these three classes both on and off the sound. He became a sailing instructor and eventually head instructor at Indian Harbor Yacht Club. Alex became a varsity sailor at MIT, where he competed in C420s, Tech dinghies, and became a captain of MIT’s Hinckley yacht, in which he gained offshore experience. He also raced multihulls, and 505s. After graduating from MIT, he bought his Mini in Guadeloupe - the boat is a French built 21 foot Pogo number 332.

The boat is named for Alex's company, Genasun, that develops solar power systems - he uses one to power his own boat.

Check out the overall race progress at http://www.transat650.org/en/
and send Alex a hello by email using the Send a Message link http://www.transat650.org/en/contestants/?send-a-message

Alex's progress, along with that of the other US sailor Clay Burkhalter from Stonington CT, is also featured at http://www.minisinamerica.com/mini_transat_2007.htm

Alex relies on funding from many sources to support his journey. If you would like to help out, you may send your donation through the Oyster Bay Sailing Foundation. Make check payable to "Oyster Bay Sailing Foundation" and write "Alex MeVay" on the notation line. Include your full name and address on the check. Mail to Oyster Bay Sailing Foundation, P.O. Box 720, Oyster Bay, NY 11771

Olympic Sailing Trials in Newport

In addition to those newly qualified at Cedar Point YC last weekend, Emily Stubbs and Cam Cullman from American YC had previously qualified. And there are other adult sailors from JSA clubs who are participating as well.

See the full list for Lasers and Radials at http://www.ussailing.org/olympics/OlympicTrials/qualified_sailors.html

Junior Sailors at Laser Olympic Sailing Trials

Thanks to Rick Bannerot of Stamford Yacht Club for pointing out that JSA of LIS had an excellent set of results this past weekend at the Last Chance Olympic Trials Regatta at Cedar Point Yacht Club in Westport, CT.

11 of the 16 newly qualified are teenagers! JSALIS junior sailors who qualified at Cedar point include Ben Liebowitz, Renee Gagne, Chloe Palmer, and Catherine Shanahan from Stamford YC, plus Amanda Taselaar from Larchmont YC.

Royce Weber from Surf City, NJ and the US Naval Academy dominated the Men's Event with four bullets, while Reguli Granger, age 16, from St. Petersburg, FL took the Women's. Weber will be joined by Jerry Tullo (Staten Island, NY), Christopher Branning (Sarasota, FL), Mattia D'Errico (Kenah, TX), Ian Sutherland (Toms River, NJ), Jon Singsen (Old Greenwich, NJ), Ben Leibowitz (Stamford, CT), Brian Raney (Port Chester, NY), and Paul Craine (Weston, CT). Granger is joined by Chloe Palmer (Sioux City, IA), Katie Smith (Newport, RI), Laura Windecker (W. Kingston, RI), Renee Gagne (Darien, CT), Callie Naughton (Marblehead, MA), Alec Payne (Ft. Lauderdale, FL) , Catherine Shanahan (Stamford CT) and Amanda Taselaar (Larchmont NY).

See details at http://www.cedarpointyc.org/Default.aspx?tabid=163

Updates from US windsurfer Steve Bodner

Steve Bodner is the 2006 US Windsurfing National Champion and is campaigning both nationally and internationally in the Formula Windsurfing Class.

For those of you who participate in your club's windsurfing group, Steve's blog will be fun. Today he is in the Nethelands where he writes, "Overall the dutch had an impressive racing scene with an up and coming junior fleet and several top world contenders."

"Sailing a formula board is a great way to really explore an area. I was out earlier this week slalom sailing in marginal conditions when I found the bottom [of the lake] real quick. Apparently the far side is a lot shallower than I thought. Better to have found that out on a production slalom fin vs a custom carbon fin. "

"Sailing alone can get a little dry after a hour or so so I had to keep my concentration up- working on tacks and gybes through the chop of passing boats. Practice makes perfect ...err perfect practice makes perfect. Anyways I was enjoying it all today and finally found my groove again. Can't wait to get back on the course again in some breeze."

See more of Steve's blog with fine photos and video at http://stevebodner.blogspot.com/

Anna Tunnicliffe and the Pressure to Win

"I had lost sight of the fun aspect of the sport and had begun to put pressure on myself to perform," Anna Tunnicliffe wrote. "The reason I got into sailing and the reason for my past successes was because I was enjoying what I was doing."

That is Anna's description about how she overcame her rocky spring season, in which she had not won a single international event, to bring home the gold medal from the Olympics tune-up regatta in Qingdao China.

So take a tip from Anna, who was also named to the ISAF Women's Laser Radial world #1 spot for the third successive ranking, and view her comments about dealing with pressure.

Connecticut State Optimist Championship

We received a reminder from ECSA that the registration deadline is fast approaching (Sept 14th)!

This event is being held on September 22 at at Wadawanuck Yacht Club, Stonington CT.

See full details at http://www.ecsa.net/juniors/2007optichamps

Classified Ads for Boats and Jobs

The first few classified ads for sale of boats & gear and for junior sailing instructor jobs during summer 2008 have begun to be posted on the JSA LIS website.

If you are selling a boat, buying a boat, offering a job or looking for a job, be sure to regularly check the JSA Classified Ad page.

Optimist Dinghy is 60 Years Old

A letter from Clifford McKay, Jr., in PointsEast magazine mentioned that he was the first boy to sail an Optimist pram in 1947.

His dad, Clifford McKay, Sr., proposed the idea of the little pram as a youth trainer to the Optimist International Club in Clearwater Florida. The club, with its mission of "Bringing Out the Best in Kids" liked the idea. So McKay worked with Clarke Mills who designed and built the first boat in two weeks. It was launched on August 27, 1947, and after a quick sail out and back from the dock, it was turned over to the junior McKay.

According to McKay, Clarke Mills said of this now famous little boat, "She looks a little funny with that stub-nosed bow, but she sails right well."

Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent

The headline would be a good quote for "Sailing Wisdom" in the JSA summer newsletter, the Ditty Bag. It might also come under "Where are they now?" in which former junior sailors grow up using the skills they learned at the helm of a small boat.

This quote comes from Paul MacCready who was best known as the designer of the Gossamer Albatross that won the prize for the first controlled human-powered flight over the 23 mile English Channel in 1979. He died recently and reading his obituary (also here) I found that this crossing was not the first time he made waves crossing a channel - when he was 8 years old he shocked his parents by piloting his sailing dinghy from their home near New Haven across Long Island Sound.

By his teens he had moved from sailing on water to sailing in the air, building model airplanes from scratch - exotic contraptions like ornithopters (with flapping bird wings) to autogyros (rotary winged airplanes). "I was always the smallest kid in the class," he told the National Aviation Hall of Fame. "And so, when I began getting into model airplanes, and getting into contests and creating new things, I probably got more psychological benefit from that than I would have from some of the other typical school things," he said. "Nobody seemed to be quite as motivated for the new and strange as I was." By age 16 he had his private pilot license.

After serving as a Navy aviator in WWII, he got involved with sailplanes (gliders that use thermal updrafts to soar like birds). He set sailplane altitude records and won a series of National Soaring Championships and was the first American to win the World Champion Soaring Contest. Spending time among the updrafts and clouds helped make MacCready became an expert meteorologist as well and he invented a system that is still used to calculate optimum flight speeds between thermal updrafts (the equivalent of "lift" for sailors).

And about that quote. It's taken from MacCready's speech on innovation at the Smithsonian Institute, the full version is:

• Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
• Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.
• Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
• Education alone will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
• Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.