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2011 Lake Garda Regatta in Italy

Lake Garda Regatta results here.

Just to give you the brief trip summary, Nick and his Team USA teammates went through several days of practice onsite, followed by an opening ceremony that included a parade of sailors with their country flags and insignia through the Italian town of Riva del Garda. It was very emotional for me, an immigrant, to see my son in his team attire with our flag. Here's a pic of the team.

The entire Garda regatta included over 800 kids from 30 countries. The portion for kids ages 12 to 15 ("juniores"), where Team USA was competing, had about 630 sailors. This is roughly equivalent to RWB (vs. the "cadetti" which are like green fleet/younger white fleet). The "juniores" raced 3 days of qualifying rounds (total 8 races), and then were divided into 4 divisions, based on their results (Gold, Silver, Bronze, Emerald). Over half the US team (including Nick) qualified for the top division, GOLD. This alone was great for Nick as far as I was concerned.

The 4th and last day of racing was only within the championship divisions, each just under 150 sailors. Final scoring for the regatta was based on all days of racing (GOLD did 2 races for total of 10, allowing 2 drops). Nick's best during the entire regatta was a 10 in the first Gold race.

In the end, after all the tallying, Nick had the 2nd best overall score of all 19 Americans, finishing well within the top 10% of the entire fleet at number 58 out of the 630+ juniores. The top American, Jack Toland of Seattle, was at number 26 and has a lot more experience, so for Nick to come even close was a nice achievement. The 3rd best American finisher was Nico Schultz from Sarasota, who's also on Team FOR.

I'm attaching a photo of Nick sailing on the lake during one of the practice days so you can see how pretty it was (and how vast).

We hope to leave for San Francisco this Saturday, with fingers crossed. He really hopes to do well enough at Team Trials to make the US national team. At least he's going to try...

Regards to everyone at VYBA