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closeGH High school junior competes in national sailing regatta in Texas
Weaver passionate about racing, wants to continue in college
Marques Hunter
of the Gateway
Gig Harbor High School junior Teddy Weaver isn’t a mind reader. He specializes in reading water. The 16-year-old has a natural talent for predicting puffs of wind and knowing how it will affect tidal movement.
When you’re racing a boat that derives its energy solely from the wind, reading the water is arguably the most important instinct a sailor can have.
Weaver carries the same gift his grandfather had when he raced boats in Denmark many years ago.
Yet after eight years of learning how to race sailboats, Weaver caught his biggest gust by winning a regional sailing competition this fall at the Columbia Gorge in Eastern Washington.
Sailors from across the Pacific Northwest turned out for an opportunity to qualify for the national regatta, but it was Weaver who came out victorious.
His performance pitted him against 18 of the best high school sailors in the laser radial division, a popular small sailing dinghy built with a shorter mast and reduced sail area, allowing light sailors to sail in heavier winds, according to wikipedia.org.
Weaver was invited to compete with the top sailors in the country for the Interscholastic Sailing Association Single Handed Championship at the Corpus Christi Yacht Club in Corpus Christi, Texas, where Weaver placed 15th out of 18 of the best high school sailors in the country.
The circuit consisted of 18 individual races in two days.
“It was really great to push myself really hard against those people,” Weaver said. “I was blown away by the competition.”
The events that led to the national regatta prepared Weaver for the elite competition. He attended an exclusive sailing camp in Boston, and his family traveled to the Columbia Gorge a handful of times to get in more practice.
Weaver, who trains with the Tacoma Yacht Club, currently is preparing for regattas this spring.
Getting his feet wet
Weaver began to sail when he was about 8. He started off in a learn-how-to-sail program for the TYC and really liked it.
“I moved on to their race team my third year,” Weaver said.
He noticed after he won a small regatta in the Wollochet Bay that he possessed natural instincts for noticing the different forces that control current. Since the TYC had only seasonal training, he began to train with the Seattle Yacht Club year-round on Union Bay. That meant commuting to Seattle up to four times a week for hours each day.
“It was a whole different perspective,” Weaver said about the competition in Seattle. “It was hard at first, but the competitiveness was the fun part.”
After he started out mid-fleet for the SYC for some time, he won his biggest racing regatta at the Northwest Youth Racing Circuit during summer 2007.
That’s when Weaver knew he had a bright future.
Local yacht club?
It’s Weaver’s goal to start a Gig Harbor Yacht Club by 2011, which would provide instruction for interested sailors of various ages and a place to train for upcoming regattas in areas like Kitsap County and as far south at Portland, Ore.
His family and other community members are in the process of gaining non-profit, 501(c)(3) status so they can begin to raise money for the club.