Sailing: Optimist Worlds Update
Team Bermuda is at the half-way point of the 2011 IODA Sailing World Championship, the penultimate event for sailors under the age of 16. The team of five sailors from the Bermuda Optimist Dinghy Association (BODA) have had three days of racing on Hawke’s Bay in Napier, New Zealand.
Organizers from the host Napier Sailing Club were challenged on Day 1 and Day 3 with very light winds and were only able to get one race completed on each of those days. Luckily good wind conditions on Day 2 allowed them to complete four quality races for a total of 6 races sailed to date.
At the end of Day 3 Rory Calsin is the top local sailor in 45th place in the 210 boat fleet. Caslin has sailed well and has carded four top 15 finishes in the “flights” of 65 boats. It takes three “flights” to complete one race.
The rest of Team Bermuda has had mixed results and are bunched in the top two-thirds of the fleet with Makai Joell in 122nd, Ceci Wollmann in 131st, Michael Barit in 133rd and Antonio Bailey in 145th. Team Bermuda coach Zizi Staniul is looking for better consistency through cleaner starts for the second half of the regatta.
Ryan Lo from Singapore is the current regatta leader followed by Bart Lambriex from the Netherlands and Javier Arribas from Peru. Dutch sailor Lambriex was a competitor here in Bermuda for the 2011 Renaissance Re Junior Gold Cup in October.
The Team Racing event is scheduled for January 4th and 5th and will see Team Bermuda up against Team Great Britain in their first match. Team seedings are determined by the combined score of each country’s five person team at the end of 3 days of fleet racing.
The sailors will have a day off on January 6th and will resume fleet racing on January 7th. Team Bermuda’s major sponsors are Aspen Insurance and the Kitson Group of Companies.
You can follow the action on the Bermuda Team blog, and the full results are here.
