Wednesday, October 26, 2011

California Fall 2011 Training

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNk9b-b6jr0

Gearing up for Perth.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

New Record: Round De Rock, Part II!






We broke our circumnavigation record by 10 mins! finishing in 3hrs 37 mins and 4 secs. It was an extremely rough sail around today, especially along the south shore, where there were big swells and a punchy 18-22kts. The breeze direction was SSE, so it meant the ever awkward beam reach for the majority of this tough leg. We left our safety boat in the dust, as we skipped over the waves, charging West. The 49er was like a bronco, frequently jumping in the air with the flying fish, with just the rudder in the water. The sensation of trapping hard and getting air is really cool and we got 15 miles of practice doing that! We had a great sail going until the approach to Whale Bay, where we had a dramatic pitchpole and flipped the boat - time at this point was 2 hrs 18 mins. The pitchpole was hard to avoid, as the waves were shoaling up as they approached the shoreline. The wipeout left us with a broken main halyard and a missing tiller extension. From there we limped into the finish in the Great Sound, with a jury rig to get her across the line. We were on track to go sub-3hrs around the island! We now know the right wind direction (or the opposite, a NNW'ly) to do it right! Just makes for a hairy sail! Its goes down as Jesse and I's most extreme sail in any boat!

Big thanks to Gareth for lending his 49er for the mission, to CELLONE and Lindos for sponsoring this event and for our safety boat drivers: Paul Doughty, Tom Evans, Malcolm Kirkland, Raymond Lambert, and Nick Hutchings. The winner of the bet was Nick Kempe, who guessed 3hrs 37 mins!

We return to San Francisco next Friday, to wrap up our training out there as we build up towards the World Championships (our first Olympic Qualifier) in Perth in December.

Monday, October 17, 2011

California Training Wrap Up






Tired, sick and enjoying the spoils of rest and our Mum's cooking, we are back in Bermuda after our most productive tranche of training in the boat. The 7 weeks of sailing we did out in the Central California Coast once again lived up to the hype as the magical combination of the hot Central Valley juxtaposed to the Cold North Pacific Ocean delivered the thermal gradient which pumped in the great wind. San Francisco Bay in particular was "skiff sailing paradise" for the month of September, as windy, sunny days were on tap day after day. The majority of the top talent from around North America (USA, CAN, MEX, & ISV) showed up, which made for a great training group to gear up for the Perth Worlds. San Francisco with its famous sea breeze and challenging chop is seen as a great warm up to Perth, which is home to notorious "Doctor" sea breeze. We sailed hard and got the most hours on the water out of any of the teams for the 7 weeks we were out there. We have never felt more comfortable in the boat and look forward to measuring up against the World Championship fleet in December!

Coaching: Worth it!
We started the training out there with a 10 day boat camp with Ramon Oliden, Spanish National Team Coach (49er Olympic Medalists Iker and Xabi). We focused on the mechanics of boat handling in the big breeze found on the bay. Ramon had a great eye and was able to make subtle adjustments to Jesse and my technique which made for much more efficient maneuvering. He is such a wealth of information to bounce ideas off and it is inspiring to know exactly how the best in the world sail the boat. We also did many hours of video analyzing, comparing our clips with the Spanish team's clips. At moments, we are looking pretty good on camera and we know what to do, but now we are working on doing it consistently under pressurized situations. Practice, Practice, Practice!

North Americans: 3rd/9 boats(second North American team)!!
This was our first real result in the boat and was no doubt a testament to the hard work we have been putting in over the past 16 months (since we went full-time) and not surprisingly the help we received from Ramon. Coaching makes a big difference, that is why the vast majority of teams countries have them and it was cool to see the high correlation with us in terms of results and coaching. Imagine if we could have him 10 days a month until the Olympics! We will need to do much more fundraising to make this a reality, but believe people/companies will take notice because of how we have responded to this first stint of coaching.

The regatta itself was a great event, with the first day being very windy and the final day being lighter and more tactical. Our key was keeping it simple and staying upright on the windy day and that seemed to work pretty well, coupled with the fact that we had good speed upwind. The second day was medium breeze and put more of a premium of managing the current and the wind shifts. Tactics and wind shifts are something we are pretty confident in and with the boat handling under control in those conditions, we sailed smart enough to consolidate our 3rd place. The regatta was won by the Finnish team, who were 11th at the last World Championships and second place went to the top American team (Storck/Moore), ranked 14th in the ISAF World Cup standings. Fourth place went to the top Canadian team, who went to the previous Olympics. We were stoked to be in the mix with these top teams and gives us confidence as we head down under to Perth. Yes it was a small fleet and has to be taken for what it is, the fact that our speed was putting us among Gold Fleet sailors consistently is promising.

Santa Cruz Training: Ocean Sailing
Well it was not quite the gnarley, memory searing conditions we had last year, where it was BIG Breeze everyday, but it was still nice to get out of the Bay after 5.5 weeks of sailing at Richmond. It is amazing the difference there is when you get a swell under your feet! Boat handling, trimming and steering, all require an adjustment period to manage the change in sea state. It is especially hard trimming the main, when you want to keep the boat perfectly flat and the boat is slowly yawling around because of the swell. It is just another factor in an already complex equation and what we learned was that it is often better to try not to react to the natural roll and trust that the swell will bring the boat back to level. The other good thing we found productive in Santa Cruz was narrowing in our rig settings in the medium breeze, a condition that has historically troubled us. We experimented with some things and think we have some leads to go faster in these conditions. It was nice too, to have the fast boats there to test alongside, to give these findings some legitimacy.

We return to San Francisco on the 28th, for 2 more weeks of sailing, to get everything dialed in for Perth and our first opportunity to qualify for next summer's Olympics.

While home, we will be painting houses, attempting another Bermuda circumnavigation (if weather permits) and co-hosting a fundraising dinner for our Campaign! Busy! But a nice change from what we have been doing since late August.

-Zander