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2nd at 2010 European Championships

June 12th, 2010 in Regattas.

With a fifth place finish today in a better-than-forecast 5-10 knot westerly, Brad and I tied with Richard Clarke and Tyler Bjorn of Canada to take second place at the Championships behind only Germans Johannes Polgar and Markus Koy in the 135 boat fleet. After sitting in sixth going into today, a lot of people needed to have tough luck for us to move up the leaderboard and really all we could do was sail our best race to ensure a good final result. We got out into a nice lane after a mediocre start and took a long righty across to the top left of the course which put us fourth around the windward mark. We held that most of the way around the track and could only watch as the other teams ahead of us in the standings struggled to catch up through the entire race. We put as much heat on the rest of the teams as we could but luck was also on our side moving us to as high a position as we could have achieved: second overall.

We’re very excited about this finish. What a great day for San Diego Yacht Club, and another strong performance by US Sailing Team Alphagraphics! Coach Ivey really held us together through a grueling, light-air week, and I think the US Team put up a strong front with our 1215 daily line-ups. By the end of the week there were lots of boats that wanted to see how they would line up against us. All the guys sailed well. The points spread in the top ten was tight because of the extraordinary series that everybody had amongst the biggest fleet in class history. Consistency was our gameplan from the get-go, and that paid off (actually after studying the results we had the best overall six-race series, edging out the winners by a point!).

This regatta has put an exclamation point on a long trip to Europe for me. I’ve been here since April 28th, delivering the boat from Weymouth to Italy to Holland to Italy and back to Weymouth, training and racing in Garda, and training and racing in Viareggio. 50 days in Europe is quite enough for me, but the hard work has paid off, and the training we did in Garda and here with Coaches Mark Ivey and Leandro Spina helped us make clear progress.Without a doubt none of this could have happened without the sponsors of USSTAG, but also our team sponsors: Sperry Top-Sider, Keanon Polarized, North Sails and Harken, as well as a number of critical donors to our campaign.

Needless to say, I’ll be glad to get home when I do next week… still 1500 more miles to drive in Europe.

Full Results: http://www.stareuropean2010.it/classifica6.pdf
Photos: http://photos.friedbits.com/2010stareuropeanchampionship

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