LYC Juniors Start Summer with
Major Championships
July 4, 2010
Kingston, Ontario and Hingham, MA
Harry Koeppel surfs downwind in big breeze on Lake Ontario.
Photo by Dave Rein
Some of LYC’s best junior sailors started the summer in style, competing in two major championships. Three Optimist sailors competed at the 2010 IODA North American Championship and Casey Klingler raced in the U.S. Junior Women’s Doublehanded Championship.
Only 30 Americans were eligible to compete at the Opti North Americans. LYC’s Harry Koeppel, Reinier Eenkema van Dijk and Ty Ingram qualified for the event thanks to their strong performance at the U.S. Opti Team Trials. The regatta, which was held in Kingston, Ontario June 26 through July 4, featured 196 racers from 21 countries, and saw a variety of winds and weather, from drifting conditions to 20 knots. Koeppel finished seven of the 12 races in the top five to finish seventh overall. Eenkema van Dijk started slowly but rallied by ending the regatta with four excellent finishes to move up to 25th. Ingram started well in the big breeze early in the week to finish a very respectable 66th in his first North Americans.
The Optimist North American Team Racing Championship was also held at the same venue contemporaneously with the fleet racing championship. Koeppel competed with his fellow U.S. Opti World Team members for the first time and the U.S. squad won the championship, earning the right to compete at the 2010 Optimist Team Racing Worlds in Langkawi, Malaysia December 28 through January 8, 2011.
Casey Klingler qualified for the Opti North Americans, but opted not to compete, instead beginning her Club 420 racing career at the U.S. Junior Women’s Doublehanded Championship in Hingham, Massachusetts for the Ida Lewis Trophy. Despite being one of the youngest sailors at the regatta, at age 13, and never having raced a Club 420 before, Klingler and her crew, Fiona Walsh (who races Interclubs at LYC during the winter), finished 20th out of 50 teams.
