Craig Thompson IS the Sailgroove Guru

Craig Thomson, URI class 07, made his big splash this week on the sailing website Sailgroove. The avid blogger makes his splash as the guest judge for the end of the year "Best of..." segments. It's great to see Craig out there talking sailing!

Morgan Paxhia Wins Second Sea Dog World Championship in a Row!

Morgan Paxhia '05 continues to dominate in frostbiting. The former Ram's standout has moved into the Sea Dog class, sailing in Wickford, RI. In early December the local fleet traveled to Connecticut due battle for the Sea Dog World Championship. Sailing in heavy air, Morgan sailed consistently and work his way to the top of the leader board. In the end, we would take home the title for the second year in a row!

Battling on a weekly basis with Morgan are many URI sailing team alums. This group includes Kyle Wilson, Chuck Allen, Peter Greene, Skip Whyte and Joey Mello.

URI Seniors Talk About Tuesday Night Team Racing In Newport

Tom Burnham Wins Louis Vuitton Trophy in Nice

URI Wins ICSA Smith Trophy!

The Professor Smith Trophy at MIT was won in convincing fashion by URI this past weekend. Marisa Nixon '10 and Matthew Carmody '11, finished 3rd in A division and Emily Anderson '10 and Ryan Hughes '12, finished 2nd in B division.

9 races were completed in B division and 7 races were finished in A division on Saturday. Lack of wind on Sunday meant that no more races would be sailed and URI would win the event by 20 points over second place Connecticut College. New to the procedureal rules this year, all races were scored for the event.

This will prove to be a "Keep" event for URI in the NEISA Rankings; a trophy level event with 26 teams should earn >0.500 ranking points. Congratulations to the sailors and the team on a well sailed event.

Judges Needed for the Moody

Alumni and Friends

The Moody has been shifted to the Fall in order to make it a more intriguing event. The event will run on October 10th and 11th, and is full at 18 teams. In order for URI to run a high quality event we need some volunteer judges to hear protest and watch the sailors on the water. It's a pretty easy task and a big help to the team. If you can help, please let me know by emailing me at JMello@etal.uri.edu.

Joey

URI past and present dominate multiple classes at the 2009 Newport Regatta

This year's Newport Regatta was littered with URI Alums with several of them winning classes. In the SB 3, Morgan Paxhia, with former classmate Kyle Wilson, took a the top spot with a collection of first place finishes. In 505s, Geoff Ewenson finished tied for first winning the tie breaker to finish at the top. Bob Merrick skippering an F18 dominated his fleet scoring only one race that wasn't a first place. In the A Cats, Chad Atkins would finish in a virtual tie with Phil Kinder but broke the tie having won the last race and took the regatta win.

There was several other alumni in attendance sailing in classes of Melges 32s, Melges 24, J 24s, Shields, Swam 42s and more. Overall it was a great weekend of sailing and great to see so many Rams out and competing at the highest level.

Craig Thompson wins Windy City Team Race

Craig Thompson '09 helped lead the Fair and Balanced team to the overall win. The team in addition to Thompson included JB Turney, Ned Turney, James Shepard, Megan Bartley and Coleen Cozzens. Fair and Balanced, a home team for the event, came out of the gates strong going undefeated in the opening round. The event victory gave the team an automatic berth to US Sailings Hinman Trophy, the US team racing national championship.

Thompson was not the only Rhody Ram in attendance as Mike Shroff, Joey Harris, Flavia Marcucci, Martin Johnson and Josh Henrich were all sailing in the 8 team event.

Congrats to Craig and the rest of the Fair and Balanced Team.

For more information please see the event website at http://www.spiweb.net/V15/fleet67/windycity09/results.html

Lars Guck Wins A-Cat North Americans

Lars Guck won the 2009 A-Cat North Americans in convincing fashion. The event was held in in Fort Walton Beach, FL at the Fort Walton Yacht Club. Lars won 8 of the 11 races in the series and posted no finish outside the top ten in a very competitive 42 boat fleet. The results are posted HERE.

It was the largest turnout in the event’s history. It was also probably the most competitive ever with three Olympic medalists competing (Jay and Pease Glaser, Randy Smyth), five World Champions (Guck, Melvin, Struble, Smyth, and Jay Glaser), a Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year (Pease Glaser), and many sailors who have won national and North American titles in other classes.

Congratulations Lars on the impressive result.

Photo courtesy of JACoulter Marine Photography

URI Women Finish 15th at Nationals

There were a lot of people cheering for URI in the Sailgroove live chat room yesterday. All 7 sailors at this event as well as the entire team back home should be very proud of your accomplishments this season. Below is a season ending interview from the Womens Team and Coach Mello: