The Official
Website of the
International
Sailing Federation

Both the Australians and the French put in fantastic performances to secure victory at the event held in Miami, USA which saw 53 teams compete from 17 nations.

However, as per the rules for a continental championship the official continental title goes to the top placed teams from that continent, which sees the newly crowned 2011 North American Champions as Stuart Mcnay and Graham Biehl (USA) in the men's and Erin Maxwell and Isabelle Kinsolving (USA) in the women's fleet.

An interesting opening day in Miami saw the reigning World Champions Mathew Belcher and Malcolm Page only just finishing ahead of Puerto Rico's Raul Rios and Gerardo Fernandez, who represented Puerto Rico at the ISAF Youth Sailing World Championships last year, in Race 1.

The Australians did not have it all their own way through the championship as McNay and Biehl were close to them all the way and with one point separating them going into the final race it was all to play for.

But in the final race the Americans found themselves at the back of the fleet finishing ninth with the Australians securing the championship in fourth. Third place went to the Spanish team of Onan Barreiros and Aaron Sarmiento (ESP).

Meanwhile in the women's championship Camille Lecointre and Mathilde Geron sailed a solid series to seal victory and will no doubt be delighted that they have improved on their third placed position in last year's North American Championship.

Ingrid Petitjean and Nadège Douroux (FRA) ranked number one in the world had their worst day of the series on the first day but improved to post two race wins to shift up into second overall. Of the nine races sailed, they were either first or second in more than half of their races and are showing some form going into the 2011 season. And the American pair of Maxwell and Kinsolving had a string of top ten results to finish in third place.

Full results can be found here.