Alex Jacobs goes South of the Border for the North American Optimist Championship
on Saturday July 21, 2007 09:23AM
Photo courtesy of Jon Fauer. For rights to this photo:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/deed.en-us
Alex Jacob has just returned from the North American Optimist Championship held in Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico between July 9th and the 14th. Alex competed with 191 sailors from 19 countries that qualified to sail in this event. The US team was comprised of 25 sailors selected at the US team trials held at Coral Reef Yacht Club in early May. Nuevo Vallarta is a new resort area of Puerto Vallarta featuring a large hotel and timeshare community.
The sailing conditions started daily with a light easterly coming off the land. As the noon temperatures passed 90 degrees the wind went dead for a couple of hours. All the while tides ran at about 1.5 knots. Wave heights ran between 5-6 feet. Many of my teammates found judging the clocking and backing breeze in these choppy tidal conditions to be quite challenging although it usually paid to sail to the left side of the racecourse in the light offshore breeze. Fortunately, every day around 2:00 pm a thermal breeze would fill in from the Pacific giving the right hand side of the course a boost as the wind filled in.
During his time at the event, James had the chance to catch up with many of Fishing Bay's good friends from Ecuador. At night the team relaxed around the expansive hotel grounds and took in the exotic animals at the hotel zoo.
On the water the Puerto Rican, Argentine, Mexican and USVI sailors posted extremely strong performances but the highlight for us back home was Alexs 9th place overall finish including a bullet on the third race. Great work and we look forward to seeing you and the rest of the FBYC Race Team at the USODA National Championship at Lake Minnetonka, MN July 22nd-26th.
For more info on the event and the results go to: www.paradisevillage.com and www.optinam2007-mexico.org/Optinam2007 .