High Performance Dinghy Sailors had it all on Columbus Day Weekend at American Yacht Club in Rye, NY
Over 85 boats turned out for the 2009 Heineken High Performance Dinghy Open (HPDO), crewed by more than 150 intrepid individuals from the USA, Canada and UK who enjoyed a weekend of conditions that performance sailors dream of. Saturday’s winds were 15 knots with gusts to 30 knots. Sunday’s were 10 knots, with gusts to 16. On both days, the northwesterly continued to build over the course of the day. In these conditions, many boats struggled to make it out to the racecourse and those who succeeded were met with incredibly challenging racing, and recovery from mishaps large and small. It’s hard to put it into words, so reprinted here with permission is a description by a competitor:
The coolest thing about the Heineken High Performance Dinghy Open is the high performance sailing camaraderie. If you have never been to the HPDO, you have to visualize this beautifully manicured yacht club on a stunning point of land overlooking Long Island Sound with view of the Manhattan skyline, except it is totally overrun by this crazy event.
There are hulls everywhere: A-Cats (an amazing 18 boats!) and F-18s (9 boats) on the lawns, 505s (16), FDs (6), RS K6s (16), Viper 640s (12) I 14s, foiling Moths and those wacky International Canoes filling every conceivable piece of the property (and it’s a large property)...and spinnakers drying, people in wetsuits and harnesses and everyone ogling each other’s boat and helping fix boats and talking tuning. It’s hard to describe how they got this so right.
There are so many people who make this happen. Beyond the members of American Yacht Club who collaborated in any number of ways to pull this all together, a huge Cheers! to Heineken USA for not letting the economic downturn dampen their enthusiasm for performance racing. Thanks also to sponsors Ronstan, Tri-Beach Holdings, APS, Zhik, Hathaway, Reiser & Raymond and PhotoBoat.com, who provided each competitor with an image of their boat in action courtesy of Heineken. Results are posted at yachtscoring.com/event_results_ cumulative.cfm?eID=276 and photos are available at PhotoBoat.com. ✦
(Editor’s note): If watching them rippin’ up the Sound at the 2009 HPDO didn’t emphatically punctuate the statement ‘High performance dinghy sailors (and cat sailors!) have more fun,’ check the boat and team names. Among the class winners are: Bang Zoom (James Godby, Canton, MA; International ACat), Technical Difficulty (Joe Jospy, Montreal, QC; Fireball), The Mambo Kings (aka Justin Scott, Brian Bigglesworth-Offalton & Ben T. Carbon (Greenwich, CT; Viper 640), The New England GANGSTAS (aka Micheal Easton & Tripp Burd (Lexington, MA; F-18), and (our pick for best 2009 HPDO Boat Name) Smart Like Tractor (Zhenya Kirueshkin-Stepanoff, Mount Hamilton, CA; International Flying Dutchman).
