West Coast Opti Groms Represent!

Five California kids put their stamp on the Team Racing event at the US Optimist National Championships currently underway at Cabrillo Beach YC. Over the previous three days, the five grommets comprising team West Side — the Bay Area’s 11-year-old Romain Screve, Santa Barbara’s sibling combo of 14-year-old Dane and 12-year-old Quinn Wilson, plus San Diego’s 15-year-old Esteban Forrer and 12-year-old Kristopher Swanson — ran the table with an 18-0 final tally. Rotating the five skippers in the four-on-four event, the California kids earned the right to represent the U.S. in October’s Euro Opti Team Cup in Berlin.

"We were one of the teams that was constantly talking," Quinn Wilson said. "We had good tactical conversation."

This is the first time the US National Opti championships have been held in California — land of myriad varieties of Sabots. With 332 entries, geography doesn’t seem to be a barrier for the rest of US Opti nation, and neither will Angels’ Gate; today’s Girls’ Nationals wraps up the inside-the-breakwater racing and starting tomorrow, the rest of the racing will be in open water seaward of the L.A. breakwater.

Although they’ve got another regatta to try to win individually in the meantime, Forrer — the only one of the five to have been to Germany — has an idea of what challenges lie ahead of Screve, Swanson, and the Wilson brothers.

"I was very young," Forrer said of his first trip to the country. "I couldn’t read many of the signs."

The signs here say, "Check out West Coast colleges — you won’t get your big hair shorn as a condition of admittance." Oh, wait, we forgot, you’re not anywhere close to worrying about that . . . in kid years, anyway. In the meantime, at least you don’t have to worry about Oktoberfest impairing your ability to read German signs!