Brazil's Bruno Fontes leads American buddy Charlie Buckingham to finish, but it's not quite enough
Alamitos Bay Yacht Club
2014 Laser class North American
and U.S. Sailing Singlehanded Championships
June 12-15, 2014 Long Beach, Calif.
June 15, 2014Sunday'sweather: Wind 4-8k S-SW; sunny, high temp. 70F.
Buckingham, Railey sweep titles at ABYC
LONG BEACH, Calif.
Charlie Buckingham and Paige Railey have been collecting trophies since they were kids, but Sunday they won some of the more precious hardware: the George D. O’Daytrophy for men and Helen Willis Hanleytrophy for women in the U.S. Sailing Singlehanded Championships.
The competition hosted by Alamitos Bay Yacht Club was part of the Laser class North American Championships, where the pair also prevailedover fleets of 73 Laser standard rigs and 108 Radials from 14 countries, respectively.
Buckingham, 25, from Newport Beach, Calif., held off Brazil's Bruno Fontes by four points---each won three of the 11 races---while Railey, 26, of Clearwater, Fla., won by 20 points with only two finishes worse than third, both of which were discards.
Chris Barnard, also from Newport Beach, staged a fast finish, winning both races Sunday to place third overall.
Conditions over four days on the open ocean trapezoid course varied from a 19-knot blowout Thursday to a wispy Sunday. The constant oscillations in direction from south to southwest and back and velocity from 4 to 8 knots caused several delays, and in the end the race committee was forced to abandon a scheduled 12th race when the 3 o'clock deadline ran out a minute after a botched desperate start by the Lasers, preventing a restart.
The two winners figured it all out better than anyone.
Railey said, "I may be blonde, but I can still think about things."
Buckinghamsaid, "I felt like I sailed a solid week. Over four days we had everything, and the competition forced you to sail well against good people."
He also credited other good people: US Sailingand his sponsor, West CoastUniversity and chairman Dave Pyle.
Gage Wilson of Cape Coral, Fla. won the nine-boat Laser 4.7 fleet with four wins.
Fontes, ranked No. 4 in the world, higher than anyone else in the event, started the day one point behind Buckingham, his training partner, but struggled in the conditions, especially in the next to last race.
"The wind shifted and I went the wrong way," he said somberly.
Next month he will join US Sailing Team Sperry Top-Sider members Buckingham, Barnard and Railey at a pre-Olympic training regatta in his homeland, in the meantime continuing to work with them out of ABYC under the guidance of the team's Laser coach, Mark Littlejohn.
"This showed us things are on course," Littlejohn said. "It's good to see a range of conditions to assess the sailors."
Railey, a former ISAF Woman Sailor of the Year, said, "All the hard work is paying off."
The men’s Laser and the women’s Laser Radial are Olympic class events;Laser 4.7 features youth participants.
The Laser, a Canadian designed dinghy, is the largest dinghy class in the world with more than 200,000 boats built.
Class winners
(12 races; two discards)
LASER STANDARD
1. Charlie Buckingham, Newport Beach, Calif., 2-3-1-2-1-1-(11)-2-5-5-(9), 22 points.
2.Bruno Fontes, Brazil, 1-1-3-3-3-3-(8)-1-3-(10)-8, 26.
3. Chris Barnard, Newport Beach, 5-8-6-8-4-(10-(22)-4-4-1-1, 41
LASER RADIAL
1. Paige Railey, Clearwater, Fla., 2-3-3-1-2-1-(11)-2-1-3-(10), 18.
LASER 4.7
1. Gage Wilson, Cape Coral, Fla., 1-1-2-3-2-2-(6)-(6)-1-3-1-3-1, 16.
Complete results
Hi-res photos
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Event information
Laser world rankings
MEDIA CONTACT
Rich Roberts
310.835.2526
cell 310.766.6547
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International Laser Class
US Sailing website
Paige Railey and Charlie Buckingham with Helen Willis Hanley and
George D. O'Day trophies as
U.S. Singlehanded champions
Race committee and racers wait
for the wind to settle down
Andrew Lewis of Trinidad & Tobago
(center) wins pin end at start
Chris Barnard (l.), 3rd overall, leads Mexico's Yanic Gentry downwind
Gage Wilson of Floridawon
Radial 4.7s with 4 wins in 11 races
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