From President Nick Bowen August 9, 2024
There are some exciting big boat races coming up in August including the Ida Lewis Distance Race (August 16) and the Twenty Hundred Club Prince Henry Race (August 24), the complete list of these race can be found here – https://nbya.org/2024-racing-season/
The NBYA Junior program kicked off the season with two clinics for our member program’s coaches. One was focused on Opti coaching and another, presented by the Better Bay Alliance, was focused on safe boating practices. The first regatta of our season, the Opti #1, was at Ida Lewis and it began with a clinic for the Opti sailors. The clinic was led by Nick Ewenson of Sail Newport and Amy Gross-Kehoe of the Positive Coaching Alliance. Unfortunately, the second day wasn’t as fruitful, and the weather forced the event to close out without a race. The other two Opti regattas, held at Barrington and Edgewood, have gone off without a hitch. The Laser fleet has completed two of its three regattas, at Sail Newport and East Greenwich, with a fleet averaging around 13 boats, which is a great turn out for this single handed class. The c420 class has two regattas that are both two days long. The first one was held at Saunderstown with the second one coming up at Sakonnet.
We just completed the annual Junior Race Week which was hosted by the Bristol Yacht Club and supported on the water by Edgewood and Barrington. We had 100 sailors from 11 clubs participate in 65 boats.
One special regatta remains: the Mary Rose Marshall Girls Clinic and Regatta will be held by Conanicut Yacht Club on August 14-15. We are very excited to have Cori Radtke, assistant head coach at Bowdoin College, return to this event to lead a c420 clinic, and Tara Foster, head coach at SUNY Maritime, to lead the opti clinic. This is a great opportunity for some world class training! Registration is still open for these regattas.
We are excited that sailors from the East Greenwich Yacht Club, a member program of NBYA, competed in the Area A Sears Cup qualifier in Bristol. Not only did this team win, but they “built a picket fence,” winning all their races. Join us in congratulating this team, consisting of skipper Colin Auvil and his crew of Madeline Ammatuna, Vincent McAteer III, and Ethan Brown. All three actively compete in the NBYA circuit and we are so proud to support them in just a few weeks when they travel to represent Area A, NBYA, and EGYC as they compete for the Cup!
As always, don’t forget to follow NBYA Junior Sailing on Instagram at @nbyajuniorsailing
Sincerely,
Nick Bowen, President nsbowen@gmail.com 203-947-6966