Test time at 2020 Skiff North Americans

The 2020 49er & 49er FX North American Championships will be held December 10-13 in Miami, FL. Also, the 29er Class will overlap for the latter two days of the event, and all three classes will be racing on Biscayne Bay.

While this year’s North American Championships will be lighter in attendance due to pandemic restrictions for neighboring countries, the event provides an opportunity to get USA sailors on the water in a competitive setting.

Planning to compete in the Olympic skiffs are US Sailing Team 49er athletes Ian Barrows (St. Thomas, USVI) and Hans Henken (Coronado, Calif.), Nevin Snow (San Diego, Calif.) and Dane Wilson (Ojai, Calif.), Harry Melges (Fontana, Wis.) and Finn Rowe (Fontana, Wis.), while new team Lucy Wilmot (Orinda, Calif.) and Erica Reineke (Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.) will seek the 49erFX title.

“We have one regatta under our belts and have been doing a lot of training in the meantime,” said Wilson, who with Snow are on the waiting list to compete at Tokyo 2020 Olympics. “The North American Championships this week will be all about applying everything we’ve been working on since the last time we were on a formal race course.”

All three 49er teams have been sailing together out of the US Sailing Center in Miami since early November and were able to race in a legitimate regatta for series two of the Skiff Generation Grand Prix on November 14-15.

Stephanie Roble and Maggie Shea, who will be competing at Tokyo 2020, have been speed testing with their coach since series two of the Skiff Generation Grand Prix.

This week is an especially important checkpoint for Leandro Spina, the US Sailing Team Olympic Development Director. “This vision of a solid pipeline of intro level skiff sailors training right alongside our Olympic skiff sailors has been a goal of the program for a long time, and it’s all coming to fruition this week in Miami.

“We got a glimpse of our efforts paying off back in November during series two of the Skiff Generation Grand Prix, but now the model is really coming together and we’re going into North Americans with an impressive turnout of competitors.”

Event details – Entry list

CORRECTION: US Sailing, which provided this information, has updated their preview for the event. Stephanie Roble and Maggie Shea (USA), who will be competing at Tokyo 2020, are not in fact participating in the event. Also, the 29er Class is not holding their North American Championship as previously stated. Scuttlebutt has updated this page to reflect these corrections.

Source: US Sailing