Newport hosted Regatta, April 20-21

High schools in the Pacific Northwest participate in sailboat racing as part of the Northwest Interscholastic Sailing Association (NWISA). Most of the teams participating are in the Puget Sound area of Washington. Oregon has three facilities where high school students can sail competitively: Newport, Hood Rand, and Portland. All are through yacht clubs that work with the schools. Newport High School (NPT) partners with the Yaquina Bay Yacht Club and the Oregon Boating Foundation to offer sailing to their students. Newport held a competition, called a regatta, here on Yaquina Bay on April 20-21, and 45 sailors from all three places participated. Hood River had three teams, Willamette Sailing Club had six teams, and Newport had enough sailors for two teams. However, Newport was short of skippers this year, so NPT mixed sailors with Hood River and Willamette Sailing Club skippers.

Regattas are set up with teams made up of at least four sailors. Two sailors go out in a boat at a time and race with other ships in a fleet, then they come into a dock, and another two sailors from the team go out and race against the other teams in their fleet. So, there is an A fleet and a B fleet, and when sailors come in, they rotate into a different boat each time, so that boat is separate for who wins. Each fleet sails the same number of races. NPT had 11 boats in each fleet and could run 13 races for each fleet over the two days of racing. The team that won the event were sailors with Hood River from Columbia High School, some of whom also sailed with and skippered the NPT 1 team, which managed to get third place overall.