Just Another Regatta

Everything is ready to go for the upcoming World Championship, our Olympic Qualifier for London. We arrived here in Zadar, Croatia a week early to acquaint ourselves with the local conditions and to make sure our boat and us are primed for the event. After some productive days on the water in different breezes, we feel good about our speed and maneuvers around the course. Ramon joined us a few days into our training, and will remain with us through the event. His insights and thoughts for the week will no doubt be invaluable. So, as this important regatta approaches, our mentality will be to treat it like any other. There is no pedestal for this event. We will not lionize the qualifying side of it unless it is necessary. Our objective here is to sail a good World Championships. To do that, we must stick to the fundamentals that we always apply when racing…sail high percentage moves, good starting, lane management, observe wind patterns etc. We are really excited to get out there and start racing. It begins Monday, so stay tuned for results! You can check our facebook page for updates. Thanks again for all your support that has gotten us to where we are today, with a chance to represent Bermuda at the Olympics in London!

PALMA RECAP

We are making our way back to North America (California then Bermuda) after 1 month of sailing in Mallorca. It was an exciting month for us, between putting our new boat together, to working with Ramon for a week, and to qualifying for Gold Fleet at the Princess Sofia Trophy - ISAF World Cup Event (Grade 1). We sailed 21 days (9 race days and 12 training days) over there and that concentrated sailing, a month before the World Champs, is a great preparation for our Olympic Qualifier. We are looking forward to a few weeks break before we head to Croatia to qualify for London 2012!

The event had 76 teams from 28 countries (we were 7th country) and was by far, our best performance in the 49er. We won two races (one in qualifying and one in Gold Fleet) and had numerous top 10’s, which had us in 7th place after day 4. The goal for the event was to sail consistently in the top 15 in the 3-day qualifying series, to make Gold Fleet. We did that, with finishes of 13, 6, 13, 3, 25, 5, 9, 1, 17.

The breeze throughout the qualifying was in the 6-10kt range and our speed in these conditions was good as anybody in the world. We were happy to close out races, where we were doing well and also to scrap back into races, when we were mired in the pack early on. The highlight of the week was winning a race in Gold Fleet, where we had great lane management on the 1st beat and then won the battle of the top 3 pack throughout the next 3 laps.

We still have much to learn in Gold Fleet though as showcased in our final day of sailing in 14-18 kts, where we struggled to find the speed we had earlier in the week. There were large waves and the sea state made for challenging 49er sailing, with the boat consistently jumping into the air (centerboard out of the water) going upwind and downwind. We have a few ideas on the tuning for these conditions for the next time; at this level, the changes are subtle, but they make a big difference when competing against this tight pack (Gold Fleeters). We were happy on the day to have kept our boat handling clean over the 3 races on the intensive 6 leg courses (think 9 spinnaker sets, 9 douses, etc), which kept our scores fairly respectable (17, 19, 17).

We were pleased with our performance here, but the mission is not complete. Qualifying at the Worlds in Croatia next month remains the priority. We have enjoyed the success, but also discussed the improvements to take away from the week. Rather than resting on the laurels of Palma, we hope to build on the success to crescendo towards a great Olympic event this summer!

Thanks again for all your support!
- Zander and Jesse

13th in Palma!!

Gold fleet for the first time!
13th Overall at a Grade 1 in an Olympic year!
7th country (28 countries represented)
Lots of work and plenty more to come!

We will update later with a fully entry.
Time for a rest and then the Olympic Qualifier in Croatia next month.
Thanks to all our faithful supporters who have supported us through these past 2 years!

Training in Palma

The last month has been an exciting and busy one. Prior to our arrival in Palma de Mallorca, we knew that it was going to be a critically important segment of training as we crescendo towards the Olympics Qualifier in early May in Croatia. When we arrived here on March 4th, we were busy for several days rigging our new boat, ‘Cahow’- she’s looking real good! After sailing 1042 for so long, we long forgot how stiff a new boat feels! We are happy to say her and the masts’ performance during our training have been very promising.

Following the preparation of the boat, we had 2 1/2 weeks of probably our most productive tranche of training to date in the beautiful bay of Palma. Almost all of the top European boats were present for at least portions of our sailing, constantly allowing us to weigh our progress. Although the weather has been a little chilly at times, we have had numerous valuable sessions on the water in light, windy, shifty, steady, flat and choppy seas. Since there are constantly world-class boats out practicing, we have been able to consistently assess our quality in both speed and maneuvers up and downwind.

In the middle of our training, we were able to test our progress in a ‘Training Camp Regatta” that fielded many good teams. The conditions through the three day event couldn’t have been more different from one another as we saw light, shifty winds on Day 1, steadier 8knots on Day 2 and concluding with a real wavy 14-18knots! We ended up finishing mid-fleet with a couple good results. A real standout out for us was our starting and speed. But again, we were plagued with some little mistakes that cost us a few top tens, specifically downwind in light winds. With some good critical evaluating of what went wrong, we prepared for Ramon’s training that began 2 days after the event.

Our week of training with Ramon couldn’t have been better timed. After feeling a little exhausted after our first half of training, Ramon’s arrival sparked us into form again. With more practice races with quality teams, we again were able to practice our skills- except this time under the watchful eye of our coach. His keen observations of our maneuvers, tactical decisions and sail trim were incredibly beneficial to us.

After Ramon left on Tuesday, we finally took a few days off to rest and relax. While European teams can just take an easy 2hr flight home to recuperate, Bermuda isn’t so close! However, we were able to escape the confines of the boat park and explore the other, less developed and more beautiful coasts of the island.

Yesterday we did our pre-regatta check of all our equipment, and gave ‘Cahow’ a good polishing prior to the Princess Sofia Regatta beginning on Monday. With a day of training today, following by a day off tomorrow, we are very excited to get racing. Keep posted for daily updates on our Facebook page (Kirkland Brothers Sailing)!
Here are a few shots of the training (Photos courtesy of Ramon)

Mallorca Update

These past 2 weeks have been an exciting one. We have put together our new boat together in Mallorca, Spain and are gearing up for the first major World Cup Event of the European Season. Most of the major players of the fleet are here or showing up in the next week or so, thus making for great practice races every afternoon in de Bahia de Palma. The event starts here on April 2 and runs through April 7th and will serve as a great “dry-run” for the World Championships (Croatia – May 7-12), which will be our Olympic Qualifier.

Ramon, our coach will be here tonight for a week of training to help us continue to refine the new boat, improve our boat handling and analyze our practice races. Further, it will be good to have him here to start the mental preparation for Croatia and make sure we are approaching the event in the right way.

Back to the new boat! The early feedback on the boat is promising. The boat has come out of the box pretty ready to go and we were able to transfer our tuning numbers from our old rig. She feels immensely stiffer (less energy lost and able to hold rig tension) than the boat we were sailing in Miami and the new style wing construction makes for a more stable platform for boat handling operations. Lining up with top teams now, with correct rig tuning, we have confidence to hold our position. That is easier said than done, but if we can consistently stay on top of our tuning, our boat speed should put us in tremendous shape.

So over these next few weeks, we will continue to tweak the boat, but also focus on our boat handling and keep our sailing ‘tidy’ (to keep the speed through all turns) around the race course. This is vital to maintain the good positioning that our speedy boat has given us with the margin for error so minimal at the top of the fleet.

All in all, we are energized about this final stage in the qualification phase and are looking forward to making Bermuda proud over the next few months!

Thank you so much for your support which has gotten us to where we are today and please standby on our progress as we aim towards London this summer!!

Jesse dodges a bullet

This youtube went viral through the sailing world last week.
Over 11,000 hits already!

Check it out. We were in 5th/6th when it happened. Lost atleast 5 boats in the debacle, but we were able to regain composure and pull together a 10th. We are lucky Jesse was not seriously injured...carbon fiber spinnaker poles are not forgiving usually.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWBNpnkY9c4&list=UUCH2lVbRbLifZTe2eCWKqwg&index=1&feature=plcp

OCR Synopsis

After a few days to gain perspective on OCR, we can analyze our racing with a little more objectivity. We ended up 12th in the 23 boat fleet, missing out on the Medal Race by 1 point! If only Jesse hadn’t of been violated by that Austrians Black Pole…(check out the youtube video- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWBNpnkY9c4) The breeze for the week ranged from 6-18 knots, with a few shifty days off Biscayne mixed in with a couple steadier ones from the Ocean.

Results wise, we had 2 top 3’s, 7 in the top 10. The top 3’s are certainly a good indicator of our progression as we are gaining some comfort battling at the front end of the fleet. One of our top 3’s was in a steady 13-17knots (no feeling of being lucky in the front when the breeze is shifting only 5 degrees), with us winning the favored pin, and leading around the first windward.

A couple positives from the regatta were our starting and downwind tactics. While we are trying to refine a couple other facets of our sailing, we were pleased to solidify starting as an asset. But even the positives can improve, and starting is no different, as we believe we can even further improve it with a couple of subtle tweaks. Our downwind tactics were something we were keen to work on from Perth, and though the fleet wasn’t as big, we were much more conscience of it and felt better throughout the racing.

As always, there are a few things we need to refine. Standing out amongst other things, we will continue to work on speed, mark roundings, and simply maintaining top speed around the race track. Speed-wise, we are not far off. After a week battling with some top boats in an old style boat in all conditions, we feel fairly good about ourselves. A couple of tweaks and we’ll be there! Mark roundings are something we can constantly practice. They are incredibly important, and becoming proficient at them could be a valuable addition to the quiver. Thirdly, maintaining top speed throughout the race has always been at the top of the list. Encompassing mark roundings with the other maneuvers, it is one of the paramount goals of each race (sounds much easier than doing!).

So, overall we felt like our performance and ability was worthy of a higher finish, but we can’t let it faze us. Ultimately, this is all a part of our road to the Worlds and hopefully the Olympics this summer. We competed in Miami with some specific goals in mind, and felt we achieved those. Looking ahead to our training in Palma, we will continue to refine a few small things here and there. We are also excited by the prospect of getting Ramon back for Palma. His world-class vision and experience is invaluable to us during this critical push toward the top level.

Also, we CAN NOT forget to mention our new boat (BER1293)! She is heading down to Weymouth from Newcastle to have some work done on her before she piggybacks a British trailer to Palma. Gotta lionize our new girl!

Start in one of the lighter races


Locked-in Downwind




Spot the Bermuda Flag


Coach Ramon and us


Leading Around the Windward in the Final Race!