Gametime in MIAMI

The Rolex Olympic Classes Regatta begins tomorrow with a more competitive field than last year’s event (4 from the top ten in the World this year). After a rejuvenating furlough at home being spoiled by our mums cooking, we returned to our winter training grounds in Miami. The sailing has been very productive, especially since the return of our coach, Ramon Oliden, this past Tuesday. We are stoked to have him with us for the event! With Ramon we have been working on the boat, getting it optimized (to Ramon’s world class eye) for the event. We have also been working on clean maneuvers around the race course under Ramon’s eye. The more confidence you get with these, the more you can get your head out of the boat and anticipate the next wind shift/pressure line.

Looking ahead to the week, we have one goal above all in our minds…RACING WELL. After squandering many great opportunities at the Worlds, we realized the need for us to shake off the rust in the fundamentals of racing (after a year and a half mostly focusing on boat handling, this can naturally happen). With our newly-found self-belief in our boat handling and speed, we have been working hard in practice to be on top of our tactics and putting together solid race-long performances. Ramon incessantly saying “head out of the boat, head out of the boat!” has certainly helped our focus (especially Jesse’s) of looking around more, focusing on the big picture.

With a promising breeze forecast for the next week, we are hopeful to put together a good championship as we are feeling ready as ever. Keep posted on the racing!

Game Day in Perth!

We are starting our Olympic Country Qualifier campaign today in Freemantle! We have put in the preparation and now we need to remain poised in the tense atmosphere of the World Championships and sail to our potential. With consistent starting, smart lane management, steady boat handling and solid pace, we are looking to get steady finishes in the low teens (12-15) to put us in the hunt for qualifying for Gold Fleet (top 25). Another thing we will have to remember is that there is only one drop for the event, which will put a premium on consistency in this long series.

The wind today is forecasted to blow offshore and we are sailing on Centre Course (real close to the beach), so it could largely be a case of staying in phase and managing the variable breeze. That said, the Easterly could fade and we could be sailing in the Doctor come this afternoon. The thing fighting this will be the clouds that are currenly overhead (we even had some rain this morning. Regardless of breeze we are ready to compete and commence our campaign to qualify Bermuda for next summer's Olympics!

-Zander

Final Chapter of San Fran Training

After our trip home, we headed back to San Francisco rejuvenated and refreshed for a final train before we head to Perth at the end of the month. We were joined by a few other 49ers for most of the training (2nd USA team, 2nd Canadian team, and the Mexican team). We were also able to get our training partner before his campaign-ending injury, Alex Bishop, to come out and coach us for most of the training. A big thanks to him! For the sailing, we were graced with a lighter breeze for most of the training, which we felt we needed after a month and a half of San Fran breeze!!

Alex was very helpful in refining/polishing our mechanics (especially in the light-air). After 30 some days of training in 12+ knots, our light air maneuvers definitely needed some practice! We were able to analyze every single one of our maneuvers in post-sailing video sessions. This constructive discussion led to many good resolutions with our mechanics looking more polished by the trainings conclusion.

A further positive out of the training was our dissection and testing of the rig in the 3-12 knots. We did a ton of testing with different mast bends, cap tensions, gybe shapes etc. By the end of the sailing, we felt more informed and confident in what we want from the rig in specific conditions.

So all in all, a very good tranche of training that saw us sail almost every day. We were stoked to get the practice in the light air, as we had hoped for it when planning this final trip. With our confidence in our boat handling and speed at its highest level yet, we are stoked and feel ready for Perth. After a couple weeks separated (Zan is coaching in SoCal, and Jesse is painting in Bermuda), we will reunite in the Aussie Summer at the end of Nov! We will have a couple weeks of training before the World Championships start on December 12, 2011. Keep posted!

SF final training video

video from last week of training with our former training partner and now expert 49er coach!

-Zander

California Fall 2011 Training

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

Gearing up for Perth.

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.

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