Day 1 of the Delta Lloyd Regatta in Mendemblik, Holland brought a mixed day. Sailing out to the race course we had a solid 12-15 knots. The Organizers decided to race all 56 boats in the same group which makes racing very challenging.
In race 1 the wind had dropped significantly. We got a decent start but not quite perfect. We were forced out to the right early and were the first to play a right shift. We sailed across the course alone to the left side to find another great shift, and soon much of the fleet was following being a little slower on the shifts. We sailed a great race with amazing downwind speed to finish 9th.
For race 2 the wind had dropped even less. We got a great start at the boat end and held out all the way to the left. Unfortunately the right was starting to look better and better. We kept cool and waited for our shift and it finally came. We salvaged a potential toss and rounded about 15th. We worked the group, and had a bid at top 8, but struggled in some traffic on the last run and finished 13th.
Race 3 will be our lucky race for the regatta. We got literally ping ponged off the line, i cant even count how many tacks we did… Before we knew it we were looking upwind at a fleet of 50 boats. We dug in left hard, for no particular reason other than it seemed like we were forced that way. Lucky enough for us the breeze died a lot and shifted 20 degress left. We rounded the top mark top 10! We sailed the rest of the race with a new breeze direction and passed a total of 3 boats to finish 6th.
At the end of a tough day our scores look great. a 9-13-6 puts us in 6th overall! For full results check out
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Immediately after training in Poland we left for Mendemblik, Holland for the Grade 1 Holland Regatta that starts on May 21.
Unfortunately we had some travel trouble and seemed to have burned out our axle and brake on our left trailor tire. We were lucky enough to be just outside Berlin when it happened and not Poland, because english being our only language made things difficult enough. We got our trailor trucked to a repair shop outside Berlin where we ran into more language barriers, and some translation favors were called in to a friend in Vienna, and our Austrian training partners who had passed us 2 hours before. Thanks again guys.
So all is sorted, but not fixed. The parts and repair couldnt be made until Wednesday, so we had to truck the trailor on a flatbed and it should be arriving by 9pm tonite in Mendemblik. We’ll keep our fingers crossed…
The last week we spend in Poland training and it was fantastic.
We had our Polish friends Patryk and Kacper who are going to the games, and were lucky enough to have the Austrians Matthias and Florian make it. We sailed out of the sailing base in Gorki Zachodnie which was fantastic. There is nothing there but a huge boat house with a small restaurant and rooms for the sailors to stay. There are 4 beds/ room and about 10-15 rooms on 3 floors. They even had a weight room, sauna, and jacuzzi!
We had a range of conditions and got to test our 2 new mains Kei at North Sails Japan had built for us on our 2 different Goldspar masts. We decided we felt comfortable with one combo over the other and thats the one we’ll be moving forward with. Kei will be with us at the end of the month to take another look at our preferred sail and help us on if we need to make another change from there for the games. Exciting stuff!
We concluded our training session with 5 races about 25 min long. Just one up, and one down through the line. We had 8-10 knots and we were blazing fast downwind. Untouchable. We had good enough speed upwind to always round right with them. In the end we scored a 1-2-1-1-1.
Special thanks to Patryk, Kacper, and their coach Robert for inviting us and to the Polish Federation for paying our stay. It was an outstanding training camp and we really learned alot about where to move forward.
After a few frantic days at home organizing our visas for China, we are now in Boston for a fundraiser at Beverly Yacht Club. Dan Cooney of US Sailing has helped organize the event, and has invited Dean Brenner to help with the event. We are really looking forward to it and it should be a great night. Â
In other news, NBC has finally launched the sailor portion of their website. http://www.nbcolympics.com/sailing/index.html
