The Miami Olympic Classes regatta finished on February 1st with four club members representing Nepean Sailing Club.
For those not familiar with the Miami OCR it is the only North American regatta on the ISAF World Cup tour, the others are in China, Australia and Europe. Thus it attracts the best Olympic and Paralympic class sailors, many supported by personal coaches. This year the regatta was plagued by light winds including the loss of one complete day of racing.
Rae-Anne Norwood placed 43rd in the Laser Radial Women’s event. Rae Anne improved in every race finishing 26th in her final race. Hopefully this will be a break out regatta for her and we will be watching closely her results at future regattas.
In the 2.4mR Paralympic Class (also open to able bodied sailors) Peter placed 10th, Christine Lavallee placed 19th and Aaron Wong-Sing placed 22nd. Similar to the other classes this class was loaded with top talent. The event was won by Megan Pascoe of Great Britain, currently ranked Number 1 in the paralympic rankings. The team was supported by Graham Fraser of the Ontario Sailing coaching staff, Johanne Lalonde from NSC and Mike Blaschuk, formerly an NSC Member who travelled from Vancouver to help with shore support and serve as our resident chef.
Next regatta is the St Petersburg spring camp and training regatta with a training camp led by the Sail Canada National Coach taking place at NSC in June.
