Atlanta Yacht Club Hosting US Sailing Championship In Acworth

ACWORTH, GA -- Racing gets underway Friday at US Sailing’s Championship of Champions, hosted by the Atlanta Yacht Club in Acworth. The sailing regatta invites National, North American, and World Champions to compete against each other over three days of racing on Lake Allatoona. This year’s fleet consists of 17 teams from all over the country, including Georgia.

A US Sailing National Championship event, the Championship of Champions pits world, North American or national class champions from a wide array of one-design classes in a boat that is unknown to many and typically on a body of water with challenging, and sometimes bewildering conditions. It’s a formula intended to upset the status quo, and often does.

In total, this year’s fleet features 11 national champions, three North American champions and one world champion. Besides Ingham there are two other past champions: Bill Draheim (Royse City, Texas), who won in 2002, and Brian Keane (Weston, Mass.), the 2013 champion.

The Atlanta Yacht Club founded Y-Flyer Fleet #1 in 1952 and is well represented in the fleet with five sailors: Bryce Dryden (Kennesaw, Ga.), the 2018 Y-Flyer National Champion, Tarasa Davis (Atlanta, Ga.), the 2018 Snipe Women’s National Champion, and Lucy Spearman (Atlanta, Ga.), the 2018 Y-Flyer Junior National Champion, are all skippers.

Crews include Shelby Hatcher (Woodstock, Ga.), a multiple winner of the Y-Flyer Junior and Women’s National championships who’ll race with Davis, and Sammy Hodges (Musella, Ga.), crew for Spearman. Hodges is the 28-year-old great grandson of E.O. “Smitty” Smithfield, a founding member of Atlanta Yacht Club and Y-Flyer Fleet #1.

Racing will be held on Lake Allatoona, an 18-square-mile lake created and managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The regatta concludes Sunday, Oct. 21.

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Y Flyers in action at the Atlanta Yacht Club. Photo by Diane Vandeputte.