The 2010 470 National Championship was hosted by the Stonington Harbor Yacht Club Sailing Foundation (SHYC SF) in Stonington, CT June 11 - 13. Twelve teams from around the country competed: three teams from St. Petersburg, FL, two from Connecticut, Illinois and Wisconsin, and three from Canada. The event included a two-day warm-up regatta on June 5 & 6, followed by a three-day training camp with Coach Skip Whyte.
The SHYC SF ran a very successful event, thanks to the volunteer race committee led by Tucker Bragdon and the outstanding scoring and shore crew led by Cindy Nickerson. Despite light winds, the race committee was able to run 13 good races.
The Manton Davis Scott Memorial Trophy for the winner of the U.S. 470 National Championship was awarded to Brendan Kopp and Michael Costello of Pequot Yacht Club in Southport CT, who notched five bullets to win the event with a total of 18 points. This perpetual trophy, created “in fond memory of an outstanding sailor and fine person,” was first awarded in 1973.
Manton Scott was raised in Darien, CT and raced in the junior sailing program at Noroton Yacht Club, skippering to win the 1969 Sears Cup. On leave from his junior year at Tufts, he was electrocuted on May 6, 1973 when the mast of his 470 (a shroud of which he was holding) touched a high tension wire strung over a boat storage area in Duxbury, MA. He is remembered as a modest, almost self-effacing sailor who was always eager to share information with competitors. Sailors whose names are engraved on the trophy include Steve Benjamin, Kevin Burnham, Neil Fowler, Allison Jolly, Morgan Reeser and Dave Ullman.
Kopp and Costello, who live in Fairfield, CT, are currently campaigning 470s around their academic schedules, with their eyes set on the 2012 and 2016 Summer Olympics. Kopp is a rising junior at Harvard University, and Costello will be starting at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA, in the fall.
The Canadian team of Andrew McCorquodale and Oliver Bone placed second with 24 points. Andrew Sumpton and Daniel Goldman of St. Petersburg, FL, were third with 42. Erin Maxwell and Isabelle Kinsolving Farrar, the 2008 470 World Champions, placed fourth despite missing all five of Friday’s races. Maxwell and Kinsolving Farrar, members of the 2010 US Sailing Team Alphagraphics, won six of the eight races they sailed, but that wasn’t enough to get them onto the podium. Complete scores are posted at shyc-sf.org.
