Tuesday, January 24, 2012

MOCR Day Two

So today was day two of Miami Olympic Classes Regatta, Hannah's first official ISAF World Cup event! So far we have had tough conditions and tough racing! We are learning a ton but man is the learning curve steep!

Yesterday we had a late start (2:15pm) which was further delayed because we are sharing a course with the Lasers and they weren't done yet. Light, patchy wind and chop. We struggled with our speed and ended up behind. After much waiting around we only ended up getting in one race as it IS still winter and the sun sets at 5 pm.

Today they switched our start time with the Lasers since we were behind races. We started racing at 10:15 am which made for a very early morning! We had three races. Overall we had really good moments and really dumb moments. Just inconsistencies with speed and also making some dumb mistakes tactically. Sometimes we were fast and in the right place, and then at other times we were slow or in the wrong place! It is all part of the learning process but the process can be a bit frustrating and painful at times!

Our third race today was probably our best yet. We had a wicked start, managed to get out left on the first beat and despite a small rules situation we rounded in 8th. We lost a few boats on the reach, gained a few boats on the run, lost a few more on the upwind and gained one back on the last run. The fleet is so small and the competition quite fierce, so one bad decision or tack means 5 boats sail by!

We are back on schedule so tomorrow we have another 2 pm start. This gives us a bit more time to relax and recuperate before more racing tomorrow!

You can read the race reports, check out the results and pictures on the event website.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Fundraisers in Calgary

We are excited to announce two fundraisers for our campaign in February of this year!

The first event is on February 18th. It will be a dinner and dance in Cheadle, Alberta featuring local comedian "Steve Stubblejumpski". Tickets for the dinner and dance are $50. Tickets for the dance only are available at the door by donation. This event is sponsored by the Cheadle Lions Association. Tickets can be picked up at Bank Gym Strathmore or by calling 403 650-2674 or 403 869-4211.

The second will be a wine and cheese and silent auction at the South Calgary Community Association in Calgary, Alberta and will feature a talk by renowned naturalist Brian Keating. Tickets are $50. This event is jointly sponsored by the Calgary Yacht Club and Newell Sailing Club. Tickets can be picked up at Glenmore Sailboats Ltd. or by calling 403 650-2674 or 403 869-4211.

Links to the posters with more information about the events are below. Please invite your friends and come out for a fun evening!        

Dinner and Dance Feb 18   Map of Cheadle Hall      

Wine and Cheese Feb 25   Map of South Calgary Community Association

Thank you to the event sponsors and to Scott and Cindy Meers for their hard work organizing these events!



Monday, January 9, 2012

Training with other boats

We picked Peter up at the airport late last night, so today was our first day sailing with him coaching us. It was also our first official day training with other 470's! lt was intense. We hit the water at noon and did a bit of stuff on our own, tacking and gybing and working on getting up to speed out of our maneuvers more quickly. Then we met up with two other boats. Graham and Jacob are fellow Canadians from Halifax and Anna and Brianna and their coach Adam are from the United States.

We tacked upwind in between a corridor created by the two coachboats. They made it more and more narrow as we got farther upwind, and the tacks came closer and closer together! It was a workout and we were quite out of breath at the end of that. Then we did some short upwinds/long downwinds to practice rounding marks and get back downwind. At first the legs were extremely short, and we struggled to get around the course correctly, but then as we got into it and the courses got longer things got better. Then we had some starts and a small race and it was time to head in!

It was a very intense 4 hour practice session. We slowly lost our intensity before Christmas when we were training by ourselves, as it is very hard to keep the pace on with no coach or teammates to encourage you. Hannah and I are both fighting head colds, so that didn't help either. We are looking forward to going to bed early tonight so we can start getting into an earlier morning routine. The races for North Americans start at 11.30 am so we will need to be on the water by 10.30 at the latest. We have even managed to convince Peter to cook dinner for us, it is so nice to have a coach around!

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Back in Miami

Hello Supporters! I hope everyone had a wonderful Holiday. We are back in Miami training for our upcoming events! We flew in on Monday, and had a few issues with our apartment. We had given our land-lady permission to sub-let our apartment while we were away, but she mixed up the dates so when I arrived home from the airport there were other people there! So we spent one night in a hotel, and another two at one of our land-lady's other rentals. As of today we are back in our apartment and settled in.

We got on the water on Tuesday for a sail in very light, 0-4 knots from the NW. It was good to get back in the boat and also back in the sunshine! Today there was no wind, so we did some running around and some boat work.

Tomorrow the Alberta Sailing Association Head Coach Peter MacDougal arrives to coach us! We are super excited to have a coach to work with again, especially Peter since Hannah and I have such history with him.
He will work with us for the next 10 days and see us through our first regatta as a team, 470 North Americans. It should be a small regatta which will be a perfect warm up for OCR.

Keep checking the blog, facebook and twitter as we should have daily updates for the next month.