Luke Ramsay named Sail Canada Sailor of the Month for February

by Sail Canada on 6 Mar 2013 Action in February continued to be focussed on the Caribbean and Florida circuits and Canadians were to the forefront in numerous regattas. Among those were former Etchells World Champion Dirk Kneulman (ON), who took the honours in a 58 boat Etchells fleet at the Florida State Championship on Biscayne Bay. In the Caribbean, Richard Clarke (BC), went match racing with Virgin Islander Taylor Canfield in Antigua and won the Budget Marine Match Racing Cup.

The Canadian Youth Worlds Team selection process concluded this month and the events saw some great results by our youth sailors in their qualification series, which has determined the team as follows:

Laser Radial Boy - Hugh Macrae (ON)
Laser Radial Girl - Corinne Peters (NS)
420 Girls - Allie Surrette (NS) and Ali ten Hove (ON)
420 Boys - Jake Megaffin (NS) and John Alexander Sapp (NS)
29er (Mixed) - Fredrique Tougas (QC) and Cameron Sawyer (QC)
Windsurfer Girl - Fannie de Alcaia (QC)
Windsurfer Boy - Gabriel Verrier-Paquette (QC)

Paralympic Gold Medallist, Paul Tingley (NS), continued his run of good form in the Sonar Class where, Bryant Wood (NS) joined the usual crew of Logan Campbell (SK) and Scott Lutes (QC) in coming second in the St Petersburg NOOD regatta, an open event. Also performing in NOOD was David Ogden (ON), who led his crew to a second place finish in the 15 boat J/24 fleet.

There was very keen competition among 173 boats entered in the Laser Mid-Winters East in Clearwater with Canadians taking leading places in both the standard and radial rig classes. In the standard rig, 2012 Olympian David Wright (ON) finished second overall,the first of seven Canadians in the top 11 spots, followed by Chris Dold (ON) (4), Robert Davis (ON) (5), Matthew Ryder (ON), (6), Tom Ramshaw (ON) (9), Greg Clunies (ON) (10) and Evert McLaughlin (ON) 11th.

In the large (105) radial fleet Luke Ramsay (BC) posted a perfect score of seven points from seven counting races to win very comprehensively while youth sailor Sandy Beatty (ON) demonstrated how much progress he has made of late by taking fourth place on a countback. Brenda Bowskill (ON) rounded off the Canadian presence on the leaderboard finishing second among the women, with 10th place overall. Top youth girl was Violet Stafford, who staged a strong comeback to finish 16th overall, just missing Youth Worlds qualification on a tie-break.

On the harder water back home, John Curtis (ON), was the leading Canadian (fourth) at the DN National Championships in Kingston, where US visitors took the podium places.

For his seven consecutive bullets at the Laser mid-Winters, Luke Ramsay is the Sail Canada Sailor of the Month for February.

Sail Canada’s Sailor of the Month award acknowledges sailing achievements by Canadians involved or associated with the sport in all its forms. Sail Canada encourages the submissions of noteworthy Canadian sailing activities to sailorofthemonth@sailing.ca.

http://www.canadiansailingteam.ca/