Poland Training with video clip

Update from Gdynia, Poland

We have been in Poland for the past 8 days training in advance of next week's European Championship. It has been generally hot with a light to moderate sea breeze developing each afternoon. We had a few days where we were in the foot-straps ripping downwind, but most of the training has been focused on keeping the boat steady in nasty chop. We have been sailing near a big sea wall, which has made for a tricky, confused wave state. The breeze has also been in the marginal double trapping territory, so it has put a huge premium on Jess and I working together to keep her balanced. Anyways after 6 sessions in these conditions, we are starting to feel more comfortable in it. Jesse and I feel our comfort level in the boat has just recently surpassed where we were in Miami in January.

We are also happy with our rig set up for these conditions, yesterday in practice races, we were holding our lane and having great winward mark roundings. This has been pretty rare for us to date, so this was a big deal. A small victory, but a good morale booster. We know this European fleet (90 boats) will be DEEP and we have tons to improve on, but we like where the trend is going...We just try and keep it one session at a time and try not to get too frustrated when our boat handling lets us down. Consistency in the boat haunts us from putting together a complete great race, but we are working towards one and we look forward to making it happen!

We had a good mini clinic with a top British Coach over the past few days and he was very encouraging and knowledgeable. His insights were helpful and his camera footage of us was cool (it is amazing how different it looks on camera).

Below is some video (we are just figuring out the camera and the editing process, it also shows how far we have to go...I swear we did some better tacks and gybes that were not on camera!) he took of us:

Racing begins on Monday and runs until Saturday. Our goal is to make silver fleet (top 2/3) and to have moments up at the front of the fleet. So in the qualifying races (33 boats per start), we are looking for consistent finishes in the teens. We want to keep on working on our starting acceleration and then escape in the front of the fleet with a nice lane! Forecast looks like more medium breeze, but it seems no one really knows what the breeze is going to do. We will keep our head of the boat as best we can and try to put together some great races.

-Zander