US Sailors Shine at LaserPerformance World Regatta

16 Year old US Sailor is overall winner Wins LaserPerformance World Open!

Laser Performance World Open- Regatta on both sides of the pond, HUGE SUCCESS!!!

This past weekend 95 competitors participated in the inaugural LaserPerformance World Open at Sail Newport in Newport, Rhode Island. Another 132 boats took part in European portion of the regatta at the Weymouth and Portland Sailing academy in the United Kingdom. The essence of the event was to combine a competitive regatta with fun sailing competition within a family style atmosphere on a global spectrum.

Brian Fisher, who won the US Laser Fleet and whose son Jack sailed in the Bug Fleet talked about the family atmosphere of the event saying, “Sailing in a regatta with my son was a blast. Given that he is only 8 years old and just starting out in an Opti, there are not too many opportunities for us to share a regatta experience together. The Bug race course was a blend of novice (Jack) sailors as well as some older kids who had obviously sailed and raced in the past. One thing for sure is that Jack and I will be making the Worlds Open an annual regatta on our schedule and I hope that other Laser sailors will too.”

At the conclusion of racing in both countries, class winners’ results were entered into a scoring matrix, the same one used at Cowes Week, to determine an overall World Open Winner. US Laser Radial winner Eliza Richartz came away with the 3rd place prize, second place went to Ross McFarlane of the UK Laser 4.7 class, and the overall 2010 LaserPerformance World Open Winner was 16 year old Nick Valente, winner of the US Sunfish Class.

A big thanks to the sponsors of the 2010 LaserPerformance World Open, Gold and Global sponsors Maclaren (MaclarenBaby.com) and Harken (Harken.com), and US Silver sponsors Gill (GillSailingGear.com), Registration Solutions (RegistrationSoulutionsllc.com), and Narragansett Beer (NarragansettBeer.com).