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By DORAN CUSHING
© St. Petersburg Times, published September 24, 2001
They're not related, but Mitch Hall of Clearwater and Corey Hall of St. Petersburg were the top Optimist Class winners at the two-day Bruce Neubauer Regatta, which was hosted by Treasure Island Tennis & Yacht Club on Boca Ciega Bay.
Sailing in the combined red, blue and white fleets, Mitch Hall won two races to edge Casey Chamberlain of Clearwater and Timothy Murphy of St. Petersburg by three points in the five-race weekend series. Chamberlain was awarded second overall based on a tiebreaker with Murphy.
Hall, 13, recently finished second at the Optimist National Championships in Rhode Island, won overall honors at the Sarasota Labor Day Regatta and represented the United States at the class world championships in China this summer.
Corey Hall, a sixth-grader at Southeast Fundamental School, won four of seven races in the green fleet for novice sailors to finish nine points ahead of Reguli Granger of St. Petersburg.
Hall has been sailing for less than a year but finished second at the Labor Day Regatta in Sarasota. The 11-year-old attributed her recent successes to lessons from the St. Petersburg Yacht Club's youth sailing program.
"I have a really good coach," she said.
Class winners were Mitch Hall in the red fleet, Chamberlain in the blue fleet and Mateo Vargas in the white fleet.
Describing the conditions during the regatta, Vargas said, "Today it was light and shifty. Yesterday the wind was pretty steady, maybe 5 to 10 knots."
The regatta was delayed for a week when Tropical Storm Gabrielle threatened the area Sept. 14.
"Despite the postponement, it was one of the bigger turnouts for the Neubauer Regatta in recent years: 81 boats," race co-chair Margie Sontag said. "We had some boats coming from Fort Lauderdale and we lost eight boats from Venice which couldn't make it due to conflicts."
Of the rest of the event, she added, "The Saturday night party with a disco is always fun for the kids. We try to appeal to the kids with a fun regatta which is not so intimidating for the novice sailors."