Euro trip # 2 - Reflection

Reflecting into the Scandinavian midnight twilight on the Ferry to Stockholm

Waiting for our flight home at Gatwick, after a very productive trip to Northern Europe over the course of the last 2 months, we feel excited about our sailing and where it is going. The trip has been our best foray to Europe yet, with a 25th place at the Grade 1 Delta Lloyd Event and consistent good moments at the ultra competitive Sail for Gold and the European regattas. We were also blessed with great wind for most of these events and were really able to up our comfort level in racing these boats at high speeds. The other major positive aspect of this trip, has been our increased knowledge of how to manage the rig settings, largely through talking with our faster friends and figuring out things by trial/error.

A full year into sailing this boat full-time and we are miles ahead of where we were last year. Hopefully we can continue this trend. We seem to be doing a lot of the hard things well (starting, lane management off the line, and boat handling) and when we can polish up the rest of our game and fire on all cylinders, we are going to be pleased with our results.

Even through this trip, we noticed better boat handling and speed in breeze, thanks to 20 days of sailing (majority under race conditions) in this trip where it was windy. This meant tens of mark roundings, bear-aways, starts and the ability to tweak our rig settings. Over 18kts, we are pretty happy with rig and have found that we have good speed with the fleet (in the windiest race of Sail For Gold, we rounded the 1st weather mark in 7th). Our breeze competency also was enhanced by our “boat-handling week” in Weymouth before going to Finland. We did tons of tacks, gybes and mark roundings at the Olympic venue. It is never easy training by yourself, but we made the most of it and felt the results in Finland.

We are excited to be heading to Santa Cruz and San Francisco in early August to continue our breeze practice because we really want to make a point of being competent BREEZE sailors in the class. There very few venues in the world, which are better to focus on windy 49er sailing than Coastal Central California and we will have an international crew (FIN, CAN, USA, MEX, DEN and maybe GBR) of training partners to sail with. We will continue to focus on sharpening our boat handling, dialing in our rig and learning how to push the boat more in the waves with the kite up. It is a real art for the crew to trim the kite and avoid putting the bow into the wave and causing a dramatic pitch-pole. The boat really needs a longer pole in those conditions to pull the bow up more, but there is a technique that we need to master to mitigate the constant danger of pitching it – basically trapeze really hard out and back and let the break the kite before rogue waves suck the bow in.

Also over the past 2 months, I noticed my fitness improve from all that breeze sailing. Towards the end of the trip, even after 4 races (with 3 laps each), I found I still had energy in the tank to deal with the spinnaker sets, douses and keeping the boat going top speed upwind. Of course, it can always be better and I will be working towards that, but it was refreshing to see my body adapt to all the sailing. It also shows that the gym training, which I do between events, could be pushed harder. It really seems like the best fitness training for the boat is just sailing the boat because it is such a complex blend of strength, agility and endurance. I am going to continue to focus on high rep training to work on shoulder, back and arm grip strength. Also mixed in cardio on the bike and the rowing machine. Jesse and I’s weight (154kg) is good for the boat and no real change is necessary, we just need to continue to get stronger, so we can avoid tiring and stay focused on sailing fast and smart.

Come to RBYC at 6pm on Thursday, July 21st to see us present our current state of the campaign! We feel we are at an exciting stage and want to share that with everyone.


- Zander