Club 420 National Championship Regatta. Photo Credit Sam Mazzeo, Serine Aerial.
OSTERVILLE – The Club 420 National Championship Regatta wrapped up last week at Wianno Yacht Club in Osterville.
The three-day event drew several hundred top the top high school aged sailors from across the United States, Canada, and as far away as Great Britain, for what is far and away the most popular double-handed class of racing sailboats in the United States.
“We had a person approach us who is very familiar with the venue that we have and seemed to think that we would be a good fit,” said Club Manager and Chairman of Wianno’s Race Committee Peter Creedon, “We benefit from a sea breeze pretty much every day here that pumps out of the south-west at 15 to 20 [knots] and those sailing conditions are pretty ideal.”
Wianno, which operates a relatively small facility overlooking West Bay, partnered with Cape Cod Academy in order to accommodate the major championship, with registration taking place at the school’s Osterville campus.
Club 420 National Championship Regatta. Photo Credit Sam Mazzeo, Serine Aerial.
“The space that we have here is very limited, so we needed a lot of help with staging, trailer parking, and registration, and it was nice to have a partner in the community step up.”
Among the challenges associated with an event of this magnitude is simply housing the 153 competing boats and equipment, as well as assembling numerous volunteers to handle logistics and food preparation for hundreds of competitors, coaches, officials, and spectators.
“When you’re running an event like this from a club our size you rely heavily on the generosity of your members in volunteering their time to pull this off,” said Creedon, “and we had members coming out of the woodwork to volunteer for this event.”
The competition itself took place about a quarter mile off shore on Nantucket sound, with each vessel participating in between three and four one-hour races each day.
Competitors were eventually seeded into two final fleets, Silver and Gold, to determine a champion on the final day.
Despite weak wind on the morning day one on the water, Creedon says that he couldn’t be happier with the way things went for the Championship races and was happy to show off Cape Cod sailing to a wide audience,
“One of the reasons you host an event like this and go through all the trouble of doing this is it’s a great way present your organization in the most favorable light,” he said, “and certainly when you have an event like this and it goes very well you’re able to show people what sailing on Cape Cod it like, it’s a definite positive.”
In the end the championship went to skipper Tucker Weed and crew Olivia de Olazarra of Coral Reef Yacht Club in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Boats from Deltaville, Virginia and Annapolis, Maryland rounded out the top three scores.
Wianno’s own Stephen Pellegrino and Mikayla Mathieu were the top local finisher coming in at 13th.
Creedon said that following that this has been a great experience for Wianno sailors and is good for the club as well, “For us it was a great way for us to get our name out there, when you’re a club like this running a summer program, and now we are transitioning into having fall and spring programs as well, it’s nice when you’re sending sailors to these national events to have your club be a recognizable name for the other sailors at the events.”
By DAVID BEATTY, CapeCod.com NewsCenter
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