It certainly was an epic June for the Annapolis Snipe Fleet! We had a super successful Colonial Cup, new members joining our fleet, and travel regattas every weekend!
Welcome new SSA Snipers!
We are excited that our fleet is continuing to grow! Brady Stagg just bought our most recent Lease-to-Own boat that he plans to sail with girlfriend Lydia McPherson. Both have sailed with us previously and we are so happy to finally have a Snipe of their own underneath them! Brady is applying for SSA membership this month. We are also excited to welcome Bill Roberts who just purchased a used Persson and reinstated his SSA membership to sail with his kids. Some of you may remember Bill from Star sailing in the 1990’s. Charlotte Carroll also joined SSA last month as an Associate Member. She has jumped in as an enthusiastic crew in the past month. Rounding out the new member welcomes is Arthur Blodgett who has moved to Annapolis from Ft. Lauderdale. SSA is like coming home for Arthur, as he was a coach at SSA in the early 2010’s and has sailed at SSA in many, many Snipe Invitationals over the years.
Stellar turn out at SSA’s Snipe Colonial Cup
36 teams from as far as Miami, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii attended the 2022 Snipe Colonial Cup, the highest in 25 years (since 1988) and included 19 teams from Severn Sailing Association, plus 2 more joining in June and July. This is a testament to the work we have done over the last 10 years to grow the fleet, mostly in the U30 segment. We are happy we have brought the “Serious Sailing, Serious Fun” vibe to a new generation of dinghy sailors. Big shout out to SSA Supporting Member Nikki Bruno who stepped up to chair her first regatta and also to the great sponsors she got for the regatta: Dunkin’ Donuts who provided coffee, bagels and donuts for breakfast both days, Helly Hansen Annapolis, Princeton College Consulting, and Student Coaching Services for swag bag contents.
The strength of this fleet cannot be understated. There were multiple current and former College All-Americans (including winning local crew Andrea Riefkohl fresh off her A-division win at College Nationals and her skipper Raul Rios, 2017 Snipe World Champion, from Puerto Rico), several national and international Snipe Champions, quite a few current college coaches, and of course our most famous former Rolex Yachtsman of the Year, Augie Diaz. There were also four teams training for the Snipe Worlds in Portugal in August – two teams of SSA Junior Associates competing in the Junior Worlds (Trevor Davis/Rees Tindall and Cole Amaral with a substitute crew from Guatemala), as well as Augie Diaz/Katie Bornarth and new Annapolitan (and new SSA member) Arthur Blodgett sailing with Grace Howie in the Senior Worlds. Even with all that talent, we were equally pleased with the number of new Snipe sailors (and even one crew who had never been in a sailboat of any kind!).
The weather gods were kind, and even though the forecast was for light both days, the actual conditions were a little bit of everything allowing for 3 races each day. The Saturday regatta party featured fantastic drinks and a taco bar upstairs from SSA’s new Snack Bar vendor from Broadneck Grill & Cantina, followed by apres-dinner Harp music from SSA’s own Flora Cole, who at 12 years old was also the youngest skipper!
Raul Rios and Andrea Riefkohl were the most consistent on Saturday with a 1,2,2 followed by Arthur Blodgett and Grace Howie, with U22 team Trevor Davis and Rees Tindall close behind. The placings were very close with multiple sets of boats crossing the finish line in short succession.
On Sunday, Arthur and Grace won the last two races but it was not quite enough to get them over Raul and Andrea who were again consistent with top 3 finishes. Augie Diaz and Katie Bornarth were also consistent, ending in third place followed by Trevor and Rees who slipped a position to 4th due to a tough last race. They still did well enough to top Boston sailor Trevor Long with SSA Junior Program’s summer Head Coach Shalom Fadullon (5th) for the Top U30 Award. There were also four Women’s Teams (plus two more women skippers sailing with male crews) vying for the Top Women’s Award, which was won decisively by Carol Cronin sailing with former Commodore Kim Couranz who were 7th overall.
ACC’s at Surf City
7 boats from Annapolis headed up to the Snipe ACC’s perennially hosted by Surf City Yacht Club. This regatta is definitely one of the more Serious Fun regattas on our schedule, complete this year with mini-golf, BBQ, guitar-playing Snipe songs, Big Dipper Ice Cream, and walks on the beach. On the Serious Sailing side, Bradley Adam teamed up with a new Sniper Travis Tucker to win his first Atlantic Coast Championship by 1 point over new Snipe owner Brady Stagg/Lydia McPherson. Class Secretary Evan Hoffmann lost the tie-breaker with Brady/Lydia to end up 3rd with another new SSA member Charlotte Carroll as crew.
Boston A/B Regatta
Rounding out the regattas in June, a few teams headed up to Boston to support a new “A/B” format regatta that was a ton of fun. The concept was to create teams that would switch of “A/B” style like collegiate and HS racing. Bradley Adam/Nikki Bruno teamed up with Bradley’s parents Bob & Stephanie Adam to create Team Geriatric Whippersnappers and Brad & Marissa Milliken pulled in Lisa Pline & Devon Feusahrens to create Team DPub. The conditions at Cottage Park Yacht Club were nuking, but the RC got racing off both days with only some carnage in bent masts, poles, and capsizes. While none of us were in the hardware (Adams team was 4th, Team DPub 6th), we all had a great time and would love to see the A/B format idea brought to Annapolis, as it is a great way to introduce new people to the Class! CPYC as made it super fun with Candle Pin bowling and an authentic taqueria-style Taco bar on Saturday night.
Women’s Snipe Nationals Planning Underway: Registration is open for the Women’s Nationals August 6-7 at SSA (bit.ly/2022-womens-nationals. The Dynamic Duo of Devon & Lauren Feusahrens are co-chairs, so we know it will be EPIC! A great team met to start the planning last month and the ideas generated were super fun, including a half day clinic, luau’s, blenders, boat boys, “postponement paddleboard” races, to name a few! We will have charter boats available, so we hope to get a lot of new women into the boat! For more info this and other great Snipe Women’s events, check out snipewomen.com.
Join us! We have boats to loan, charter, and lease-to-own, so contact us if you’d like to join the fun!
Lisa Pline, Fleet Captain
lisa@teampline.org
443-994-7203
Annapolis Snipe Fleet 532 