Optimist, Open Skiff, Youth & Olympic Sailing Blog

There was a surprise registration at Fall CORK in the Laser 4.7 fleet: Cort Snyder, from the Lauderdale Yacht Club in Florida, who won the prestigious Orange Bowl regatta in the Optimist in December last year, and who placed 4th overall at the Garda meeting in 2018, with over 1000 participants. Canadian Laser 4.7 sailor Noah Adler in action The Fall CORK regatta (CORK stands for Canadian Olympic-training Regatta, Kingston) was a 2 day event, held this year in summer like conditions. First day were light winds, and only 2 races were possible. For the second day, there were sustained winds of 12 to 15 knots, and 3 races were completed. Snyder won the regatta in the Laser 4.7 with 3 bullets and 2 second positions. Second in the Laser 4.7 was Noah Adler from Nova Scotia, the 2018 Canadian Optimist champion.  The Laser 4.7 fleet had 19 boats, versus 12 in the Standard and 68 in the Radial, which was won by Canadian sailing team sailor Coralie Vittecoq, from Québec. The standard ...

Like last year, several of the best US sailors will attend Optimist CORK in Kingston on August 9-12. Among them, none other than North American, South American and USA champion - Stephan Baker (see picture) Stephan Baker is one of the favorites for the Optimist Worlds to be held in Cyprus shortly after, along with the reigning Optimist World Champion Marco Gradoni from Italy. In 2017, Stephan Baker won Optimist CORK in front of three other US sailors: Peter Foley, Liam O'Keefe and Sara Shuman. 5th and first Canadian was Jackson Macaulay out of Halifax. There was a total of 128 competitors in the championship fleets. http://www.cork.org/past-results/results2017/optimist/optimist_results.htm

A picture from Europe - where there are 4.7 youth fleets about as large as the Radial youth fleets JUNE 13 UPDATE: The organizers of CORK in Kingston have just announced that there will be a separate Laser 4.7 fleet, after all! As long as there are more than 10 registrations in the fleet - which is most likely as there is word of competitors coming from as far as Florida to compete! Our take: any youth Laser sailor below 145 lbs should sail the 4.7 fleet, which is attracting a growing number of the previously top Canadian Opti sailors. Sailing the Radial when underweight, especially in Kingston where the wind conditions can be very challenging indeed, is a mistake. See the Update from the Organizer s. --------------------- The year 2018 is seeing the emergence of Laser 4.7 fleets in Canada, and this is good news. For many years, in Canada, youth sailors out of the Optimist have transitioned directly to the Laser Radial, a rig way too powerful for sailors typically weight...

After delays and several date changes, the Canadian Optimist Dinghy Association has announced the Notice of Race for its 2018 championships, to be held in late August in Squamish, British Columbia. The Canadian Optimist championships were held in 2015 in the same venue and attracted 57 participants, mostly local ones (as compared to some 150 participants in Halifax in 2017). In 2015, sailing was only possible in Squamish one out of the 5 days of the championships, because of bad weather. High costs are probably a key reason for the low participation. One can also compare that past participation to Optimist CORK (in Kingston, ON), which attracted 128 participants in 2017 - even the less-attended Fall CORK regatta attracted more sailors)  Some clubs, for example in the Montreal area, presently don’t have advanced Optimist teams and are unlikely to be present. This year, it is already known that some of the best sailors in Canada will be absent from the national championship, ...