North Shore Sailing Team

The first regatta of the 2012 BC Circuit, Kitten Cup, just finished up at Royal Van. We brought a big team: 12 optis, 2 radials, a 420 and a 29er. Unfortunately Saturday was a bust; no wind and drizzly rain all day. Only the 420s and 29ers got a race on Saturday. Sunday was a different story with a solid 8-10 knot westerly filling in around 11am and lasting for most of the day.

Follow NSST on Twitter! @NSSailingTeam

The optis just finished a 3-day camp at Royal Van. We had about 20 sailors at the camp, and half of those were NSST sailors. From the development team, we had Mait, Matthew, Lee and Gabriel, and from the rep team we had Cisco, Diego, Jack, Emily, Alex and Mountain. With the exception of a short hail storm on Friday, we had gorgeous, sunny weather and great wind. It was great to see how much more comfortable the development sailors are getting when the wind picks up.

We're working on team gear, including rash guards and t-shirts. For the shirts we want something the sailors (and coaches!) will actually wear, so we're having a design contest. Any sailor or parent can create a design for the front of the t-shirt. The design can be any size - it can be small or take up the whole front of the shirt! Designs must be submitted by email to me by Friday, April 6. After that, we will have one week for the sailors to vote on the design.

Some rules for the design:
- be in one colour

The opti sailors had a fantastic spring break camp. Cisco, Diego, Andrew, Ryan, Nelson, Gabriel, Lee, Rohan, Jack, Tommy and Emily were all at Royal Van for the four days of training. The wind mostly cooperated, but the weather didn't - it hailed for a few minutes every day! One day, we even had snow, hail, rain and sun all at the same time! We had a lot of coaches and were able to split the optis into 3 groups, which meant smaller groups and more coaching for all the sailors.

Just a reminder, we are having a parent meeting for all opti team parents in the Yachting Centre tomorrow at 7pm.

The March 2012 issue of Pacific Yachting has an article on youth sailing in BC, featuring some of our very own NSST opti sailors! Check it out!

We're going to do something a little different for fitness and theory on Feb 28 - we're going to go cross country skiing up at Cypress! Some sailors have their own cross country ski gear and will only need the trail ticket, and others will have to rent. The costs will be:

12 years and under:
Trail Ticket and Rental - $16
Trail Ticket only - $7

13-17 years old:
Trail Ticket and Rental - $22.50
Trail Ticket only - $10

Adults:
Trail Ticket and Rental - $27
Trail Ticket only - $14.50

A short clip about the BC Opti Champs in Comox from Shaw TV!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ0XTHxBRhQ

Pumpkin Bowl was the last BC Sailing Circuit event of the year, and was hosted at WVYC. We had stellar weather and fantastic volunteers. Our sailors had some fabulous races, and many of our sailors placed in the top-10 in their fleets (impressive in the 50-boat opti fleet!). Jack won the overall optis, and was followed by Edward in 3rd place in blue fleet. Ciaran was 5th place in red. Also racing in red fleet were Ryan and Cisco. Sailing in the blue fleet were Alec, Andrew, Kevin, Emily, Sierra and Mountain, and Diego raced in white.