24 Jul Kopp Claims Victory at Grade 4
OYSTER BAY, NEW YORK (July 22, 2018) – Skipper Bryce Kopp, who did pit for Pearson Potts during his winning run at last year’s US Match Racing Championship, found victory at Oakcliff’s July Grade 4 Clinegatta with coaching by Dave Perry. His crew consisted of Tim Clark (main), Can Nash (float), and Sarah Stephan (trim), Jill Fattibene (tactics), and Bryan Stephan (bow).
With two days of heavy breeze good boat-handling was key to coming out on top. “This weekend was super windy with tons of shifts so our strategy was to out-boat handle the other guys,” said Kopp. “We had a lot of really close races and saw some awesome match racing.”
In second place was Derek Webster and in third was round robin leader Patrick Shanahan who had an eight-race winning streak on day one. Three of the nine teams who competed were skippered by women and eight teams had two or more female crew.
The mix of men and women produced some high quality dynamic racing. “What I saw today looked more like Grade 3 racing than Grade 4 racing,” said Organizing Authority, Bill Simon.
Janel Zarkowsky, the 2016 Runner Up US Women’s Match Race Champion, took fourth, narrowly missing the podium in her first-to-two petite final match-up against Patrick Shanahan. “The biggest thing that helped us was nailing our boat-handling,” said Shanahan. “The breeze was up so we were doing everything early,” said Shanahan’s bowman Brendan Feeney. “It was worth it to get the kite down and stowed early for the rounding.”
This weekend was also the debut of Oakcliff’s new Nordac 3Di jibs for the entire Swedish Match 40 fleet. This brand new line of sails from from North features their patented 3Di molding technology with dacron instead of carbon fiber.
“They performed great,” said Oakcliff’s Match 40 Fleet Captain Chris Kennedy. “They had a beautiful shape that held throughout the entire wind range. They were also forgiving of halyard tension, or lack of tension after a hasty hoist.”
FINAL RESULTS
1 Bryce Kopp
2 Derek Webster
3 Patrick Shanahan
4 Janel Zarkowsky
5 Hugh MacGillivray
6 Doug Shannon
7 Patty Bryan
8 Jim McNally
9 Margie Pugatch