2021 Etchells Midwinters West

Lifted, skippered by Jim Cunningham and crewed by Steve Hunt, Erik Shampain, and Serena Village, topped 23 other teams to win the 2021 Etchells Midwinters West, held April 9-11 in San Diego, CA.

“We hadn’t sailed for over a year. The NOOD Regatta was our first regatta back and we didn’t know what to expect. We came in third place at it and had a solid regatta given that we hadn’t been on the water for a year,” said Cunningham.

The Etchells Midwinters West winning team finished the first day of the regatta in fourth place and slowly made their way into first by the end of the regatta with two bullets on the score sheet. After throwing out an 8 in race three, they stayed consistently at the top four spots in the fleet, finishing with 16 points.

After three days of light winds, Lifted was followed by Elizabeth in second place with 19 points, skippered by Chris Busch and crewed by Ben Mitchell and Patrick Powell.

“We have been fortunate enough to be teamed up with Tom Carruthers for several years, either crewing for Tom, coaching, and now his tuning partner,” shared Mitchell. “For the last year and a half, we have been doing two-boat tuning to practice before racing in the One Design Weekends.”

Carruthers might have coached them a little too well. His boat, Louise, crewed by Bill Hardesty and Jeff Reynolds, came in one point behind Elizabeth in the final results, finishing in third place with 20 points.

Event details: https://yachtscoring.com/emenu.cfm?eID=14338