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(L-R) Commodore Peter McKenna with
the winning crew Jud Smith, Kurt Winklemann, Brad Boston
and Event Chairman Dan O'Grady
Jud is from Boston, Kurt is from New York and Brad is from Canada
and they sail as a team in New York YC
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Congratulations to Kurt Winklemann, Jud Smith and Brad Boston who won the Etchells East Coast Championships in HYC this bank holiday weekend, on 5-6th June. Jud Smith (former Etchells World Champion) and his team sailed an excellent series winning 5 of the 6 races and really showed the Irish etchells fleet how it should be done! This was great competition for the Irish fleet and we look forward to Kurt, Jud and Brad returning for the Etchells Nationals and Worlds in August.
Congrats also to Dan O'Grady, Paul Reilly and Owen Meade who finished 2nd overall and top Irish boat. Dan and his crew also won race 4 on Sunday morning - this was great encouragement for the whole Irish fleet to know that the Americans were not invincible! Well done also to Jay Bourke, David Cagney and Declan MacManus (the current Etchells European Champions) who finished 3rd overall. Other strong Irish performances included Simon Knowles, Jonathan Hartshorn and John O'Shea who tied on overall points with Stephen Quinn, Stephen O'Flaherty and Peter Kingston to finish 4th and 5th overall (3rd and 4th Irish boats respectively).
A great regatta was had by all in varying breeze conditions, ranging from 0-12 knots in a changeable wind direction.
Thanks very much to Stephen O'Flaherty for recording all the races via GPS and uploading them to Kattack where all the races can be viewed at: http://www.kattack.com/webplayer/#. Simply register on the Kattack website, click on start web player and search for the Etchells East Coast Championships (5 and 6 June 2010).
This is a great way to review and analyze the races, see boat speeds on each leg and average boat speeds for full races and begin to understand which boats did well in each race and why! This is a great resource and hopefully we'll get to see many more races on Kattack in 2010!
Particular thanks must go to:
 | Joint PROs - Peter McKenna and Harry Gallagher, and their entire race management team on the Free Enterprise who did an excellent job to get in the full regatta schedule of 6 races completed in testing wind conditions |
| Dan O'Grady, the event Chairman and his entire event organizing committee |
| Berchmans Gannon, Julian Ritchie and Geraldine Eickholt in the race office |
| Stephen O'Flaherty for recording all the races and tracking all the races on Kattack |
| John Deane for taking the photos and all the website updates |
| All the rescue drivers and crews |
| All the participants especially Kurt, Brad and Jud from USA |
| And of course all the HYC staff |
Good luck and very best wishes for the 2010 sailing season!
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