Having just returned from Miami, I wanted to say thank you so much for underwriting my participation at the 58th Annual Open Orange Bowl. My partner Tyler Wood and I had such a great time in our second i420 regatta. We were able to meet so many fellow i420 sailors from across the country and really enjoyed this opportunity. Being coached by the LISOT team brought new information and experiences we really valued. Tyler and I head back to Miami next week for our third i420 event at the North American Championships. All of our training and travel would not be possible without your support.  

I would like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to travel to Florida to sail in the 2020 58th Annual Open Orange Bowl Regatta at the Coconut Grove Sailing Club in Coconut Grove, Miami. This was a very good experience for me to get more racing under my belt. I was very fortunate that during this regatta we had all types of wind. This helped me get better in every wind condition or situation.

I would like to thank you for your support allowing me the opportunity to travel back East to Maryland to sail in the 2020 I420 MidAtlantic Championship in Gunpowder, Maryland. The event was hosted by the Chesapeake Experience and Sail1Design. This regatta was a great experience for me because it was out of my comfort zone. It was very shifty and overall a very hard venue to sail in. But, this experience made me a better sailor.

I would like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to travel back East to Connecticut to sail in the 2020 I420 Atlantic Coast Championship at Indian Harbor Yacht Club in Greenwich, CT. It was a very good learning experience for me, as it was my first i420 Regatta. I had the pleasure of sailing with Noble Reynoso, who is a two-time club 420 Triple Crown Winner. Noble helped me a lot with getting to know the boat in regatta situations, and he also helped me get more comfortable starting.

Thank you for your financial support which helped me to attend the 2020 I420 North Americans held at Coconut Grove Sailing Center in Miami, Florida and 2020 I420 Midwinters held at Miami Yacht Club. I participated with my skipper Sophia Devling in the I420 fleet. These regatta were the second and third of three qualifying events for I420 Worlds which would have been held in France this summer. 

This Valentine’s Day weekend, I crewed for Morgan Pinckney at the 2020 c420 Midwinters in Jensen Beach, Florida. It was our first large scale c420 event together, and we are both proud to represent Newport Harbor Yacht Club with our second-place finish out of 81 boats. After flying in on the Thursday before the event, Morgan and I spent our Valentine’s Day rigging and preparing for the 3-day regatta. Unlike most of the other competitors, Morgan and I had little time sailing together, and because we didn’t have a coach for the weekend, we spent our prep day being as thorough as possible in setting up the boat and learning each others’ habits. The first two days of the regatta were relatively breezy, but nothing Morgan or I weren’t used to. We were able to capitalize on the other boats’ mistakes and have consistent results in the top ten. The last day, we were postponed for a couple of hours until the breeze filled in from the same direction as the days before. Because Morgan and I had sailed a relatively consistent regatta up until that point, we were sitting in eighth place, behind the teams that threw out deep scores and kept the races with lower numbers. However, the last day, with breeze that replicated Newport’s conditions (light, flat water, and shifty), Morgan and I performed well beyond the teams in front of us who only specialized in heavy breeze. We finished 2nd and 1st in the last two races, moving us up six places in the results and ultimately putting us on the podium. I would like to express my gratitude in particular to Mrs. Pinckney for helping Morgan and I navigate ourselves in a regatta without a coach or team, and to the Newport Harbor Sailing Foundation for their help in make attending this event possible. Thank you!