November 2020

With summer officially behind us, and fall well underway, our sailors have enjoyed the change in weather. Fall breezes have offered our race team some great practice opportunities. As tends to happen, some of our sailors grew quite a bit in the offseason. This provides us a great opportunity to encourage them to try their hand at a new boat. This season, Cooper Duquette is moving up from the optimist class to race in the 420 class with James Freund. Brodie Hausmann plans to improve upon the strong showings he posted last spring in the laser fleet, while Isaiah Thomas and Regina Rettig continue to hone their skills in the optimist fleet.
 
2020 has been a strange year, which means many of our sailors have not had a chance to compete in a regatta in many months. Turns out, there was quite a bit of trepidation leading into our first inter-club regatta last month! Coach Mike and Coach Lisa have done an incredible job in preparing this team and in getting them excited to sail.  They journeyed down to Sarasota Bay to compete against other regional clubs for a one-day regatta. 
 
It was medium to light air all day with very competitive fleets all around. Regina and Isaiah faced some stiff competition in the RWB Opti fleet. After grinding out five races, they both managed to land in the top of the fleet with Isaiah in 10th and Regina in 12th.  Watching these two progress over the past couple of years has been fun – they are now consistently competing at regattas and learning more about tactics and maneuvering their boat with each race.
 
This was the first regatta for James and Cooper in the 420 fleet together.  While James has 420 racing experience, Cooper just made the switch from sailing solo in the Optimist fleet. For them to walk away with a 4th place out of 14 boats is outstanding! They had some shining moments of being in the top five, but mostly posted consistent finishes which served them well in the end.
 
Overall, it was a new challenge for our sailors to compete in a regatta without an actual protest committee. No protests or penalties are allowed in this modified format, which can be frustrating for the honest competitor - which of course, describes our sailors.
 
Congrats to the MRPF race team! We are so proud of this group, the way they show up eager to practice and to compete while respecting each other and the environment, reminds us why we do what we do.