The Boothbay Harbor Yacht Club Junior Program will be sending a two-person team, Ella Beauregard and Hamilton Barclay, to LaSalle, Michigan for the US Sailing National Junior Championships from Aug. 6 to Aug. 10.

BHYC hosted the three-day qualifying event earlier this month. Beauregard and Barclay took second place, outpaced by only one point. At the same time, BHYC also hosted the Maine State Opti Championship. Barclay, 2017 champion, took first place keeping the trophy. Earlier in the season, the duo took second place at the 2018 Youth Challenge in Newport, Rhode Island and ninth place out of 72 boats at the New England Championship in Stonington, Connecticut.

With the two athletes less than three weeks away from the most important race of their lives thus far, their focus and determination are palpable and their attitude is professional and beyond their years.

“It’s definitely a great experience for us,” said Barclay. “We’re not going to go in with any big expectations because we’re still pretty young and have several years to do well at these national championship regattas. We’ll just use this as a learning experience to base our training around in the future.”

Beauregard agreed. She added, she is as nervous as she is excited and she is not sure what to expect. “I’m so happy that we qualified. I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen. I feel like it could be one of those things where we could do really well or we could do quite awful.”

However, Beauregard said those were the same feelings she had before she and Barclay took second at the qualifying event.

Beauregard, who hails from Michigan, will be going out early and will have family at the water’s edge cheering her on. "I’m going to have a whole fan club there. That’s exciting.”

The two athletes are busy lately preparing for waters quite different from what they are used to. LaSalle is on Lake Erie which Beauregard’s father warned can be very windy and choppy, something the two athletes said they are not accustomed to with the relatively mild conditions in Boothbay Harbor.

“Every windy day we try to get out there and do as much heavy wind maneuvers as we can just so we can prepare ourselves for those conditions,” said Barclay.

Both agreed practice is very important as their combined weight is about 30 pounds under the ideal weight for their class of boat (C-420’s).

“It requires a lot of work, but we can pull it off,” said Barclay.

Eleven regions will bring 20 doublehanded boats to compete. Racers will be between ages 13 and 18 and will compete for the F. Gregg Bemis Trophy and the Bemis Sportsmanship Trophy. Barclay, who turns 14 next month, and Beauregard, 15, will likely be among the youngest racers there, said Charles Barclay, sailing coach and Hamilton’s father. He will be joining the two in Michigan as a parent and chaperone. US Sailing will provide coaches to guide athletes and to perform clinics before the racing begins.

“We’d like to thank the Yacht Club for giving us the opportunity to sail the boats, for hosting the regatta,” Hamilton Barclay said. “There were so many great volunteers that helped put this together to make it possible.”

Beauregard added, “And definitely Charles for coaching us.”