Newbies lead Lightning North Americans

Sheboygan, WI (August 14, 2014) – Michael Zonnenberg, Michael Booker and Adam Ceely will all be starting their senior year at the University of Vermont in just a few short weeks, but before they do they handed out a lesson to veteran Lightning sailors today at the first day of Championship to lead the 2014 Lightning North American Championships.

Zonnenberg and his team started sailing Lightnings this summer and this is their 4th Lightning regatta. He is the Grandson of the late Joseph Dissette, longtime Lightning sailor and supporter from Michigan. He credits his experience with lots of college starts for his success today. He also said by keeping things simple and not over thinking each tactical decision or maneuver helped today.

Zonnenberg posted a 10, 3 and 8 today and leads the fleet with 21 total points. Defending NA’s Champ Alan Terhune sailing with Marguerite Kohler and Nicole Breault were able to skip the qualifying series and without a warm-up were still able to win the first race and are sitting in second place. With a fleet this deep most of the top teams spent a bit of time looking at many transoms today. Jody Starck and her team of Skip Dieball and Ian Jones are tied for third with Greg Fisher, Jo Ann Fisher and Zeke Horowitz with a total of 32 points.

Two of our under 30 teams took home race winner flags today. Adam MacDonald, Abby Bennett and Sam Jones won the second race and Tim Scanlon, Sam Williams and Bernie Roesler won the third race.

Racing concludes tomorrow (Friday) with 3 possible races. An earlier start time is scheduled with a 0900 warning. The top three Countries are in competition for Country qualifying spots in the 2015 Pan American Games.

Event website – Results – Photos