Riverview students win Nacra 15 division of Youth National Championships

When Riverview High School students Mark Brunsvold and Dylan Heinz docked their Nacra 15 sailboat June 25 on Corpus Christi Bay in Texas, they discovered one of the boats’ two catamaran hulls had a leak.

A big one, in fact. The hull had taken on 35 pounds of water, which had sloshed around all day without the boys’ notice, ostensibly slowing them down.

It didn’t matter. The discovery came at the end of the 2017 United States Sailing Association Youth Championships’ first day, out of four. Brunsvold and Heinz were in second place after the day’s three races even with the extra weight and motion. They removed the water, sponged out the hull and tightened the hull’s bolts so even Superman would have some trouble opening them. With no leaks for the remaining races, they excelled. As the pair entered the championships’ final race, they needed a second-place finish to guarantee the national title.

They got just that.

As Brunsvold, 16, and Heinz, 15, approached the finish line, they had a singular thought: “We’re going to China.”

As the winners of the Nacra 15 division, they will represent the United States in the 2017 World Sailing Youth Championship in December, heading to Sanya, China, to do so.

“We want to do well there, but no matter what happens, the opportunity is great,” Heinz said. “It’s something we can put on our sailing resumes.”

Asked why they didn’t take time to celebrate the U.S. victory, Brunsvold likened it to a football team winning its division, and the World Championships to the Super Bowl. It’s nice, he said, but the ultimate goal is still out there. Brunsvold should know. He won the Youth Championships’ F16 division with his one-year-older brother, Anderson Brunsvold, in 2015.

Sailing requires great chemistry between Brunsvold, the driver, and Heinz, the crewman. They credited their success to similar mindsets on the water. It’s the way they handle things, Brunsvold said. They both know what to do when something goes wrong. There is no air of panic. Instead, they said, there is an attitude of “We’re going to fix this, now.”

The two go wakeboarding and tubing together when not sailing. Any water sport, really.

“It’s too hot to do anything else,” Brunsvold said.

Practice occupies much of the pair’s time, though. When lots of other teams stop for the summer, they said, they keep going. During those practices, they learn to predict weather patterns, waves and currents. Those factors are going to be different for each individual race, they said, so learning to predict how they change and develop is a key skill.

The boys didn’t always have such a strong relationship. They met at Sarasota Youth Sailing, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit charitable organization that provides sailing instruction and coaching to young sailors, according to its website, four or five years ago. They can’t remember which. Heinz was already in the program, having started sailing with SYS when he was 8. When Brunsvold joined, Heinz saw him as just another new kid, and didn’t speak with him much. As the years went on, and both proved their respective skills, they grew closer. The best only want to work with the best, after all.

The type of sailboat Brunsvold and Heinz used, the Nacra 15 catamaran, is a new one, with the first models shipped out last year. It is designed to be the future of youth sailing. With two curved dagger boards that provide lift and reduce drag, it’s the fastest youth boat in existence. The pair enjoy the Nacra 15, though it is smaller than most boats, so learning to navigate the boat itself was a challenge at first.

It didn’t hold them back for long. In addition to qualifying for the World Championships in December, the win at Youth Nationals also put them in the U.S. Youth Olympic Development program, and access to all the coaching and resources that come with it. It’s the gateway to an Olympic path.

Depending on how China goes, the boys will consider following it.