Another year has come and gone. It is a good time for us to reflect on our experience and progress. There were a lot of new ideas we implemented over the year and we came away with many lessons that continue to make us better sailors and people. From skills such as boat handling techniques to rig tuning, all the way to team compatibility, scheduling, and our relations with you as supporters. The successes we have had, continue to raise our confidence and belief in the program, while the failures have taught us important lessons and drive us even harder to push forward.

The past month was a complete encapsulation of these lessons. Continuing our tra...

With Canada's temperatures dropping so quickly towards the end of October, we knew it was time to get out of there and search for warmer training. Unfortunately, we were 2 days too late and Evan sustained an injury to several muscles in the shoulder and arm during our second last sailing session. Between fatigue from the extensive work we had put in and the harsh temperatures, two muscles attached to the scapula were strained as well as the bicep muscle. While no injury is every positive, we were lucky that this happened at a convenient time. With a 4 day Sail Canada camp occurring back in Oyster Bay NY followed by 10 days off before travelling to our...

Finishing off a progressive September block we headed 7 hours south to Long Island USA, where we prepared to test our practices. We finishing Triple Crown Stage II with a tight 2nd place battle during the penultimate day of racing> the Result was just a bonus to the improvements we have made. Our communication and priorities were on lock in the gusty, shifty conditions; it made for clear minded decision-making and strong anticipation. Skills wise the different techniques we experimented with became useful in certain situations; it is a great tool on our boat-handling tool-belt. Finally, it was boosting mentally to see the improvements put into place. M...

Man it feels good to be back on the grind! After resetting during August and spending some time off, we are back to our full time hustle. We have had a lot of activities this month so we'll try and fill you in on some exciting points.

Training is back in full swing working with the new Sail Canada coach Krzysztof. We have primarily been training alone with our coach in Kingston, working on our boat handling and mental game. It has been very refreshing to just focus on ourselves after spending so much of 2018 racing with other teams. It has helped us a lot adjust our mindset and progress at our own pace. We have done some tweaking with our tacking, gybin...

Even though August had been scheduled as our time off for the season we somehow managed to stay busy through the month. After a short 3 day turn around from the Worlds we were in Kingston racing the CORK Senior Champs/49er Nationals. Kingston is a place we have spent a lot of our sailing careers and we enjoy every opportunity we get to train there. Seeing many of our Canadian friends was a great way to spend our down time and we were happy to claim the Canadian 49er National title. We also had the opportunity to speak with the reformed Sail Canada staff and we were filled in on the exciting training plans they have in store to develop a strong Canadian...

The Hempel World Championship were the event we had been working towards over the past year. Over the course of this Olympic quad, it was the first chance for countries to qualify for Tokyo 2020. Moreover, it was the largest event of the Olympic buildup and the best chance to check in with your competition to see how your skills are getting on. Since we decided after Jr Worlds 2017 that we were going to pursue our Olympic campaign full-time, this was the goal event we had in mind; looking to significantly improve our sailing during the lead up time and put in a solid results performance at this event.

Our skills had consistently been building up through...

Last month we discussed our predicament with legally staying here in Europe to train and compete. After using 80 of the permitted 90 days during our first trip across the pond, we came across the dilemma of lengthening the time we are allowed to be in the European Union. After a month and a half of filling documents we made our way to Amsterdam where we have now received a temporary visas. This will allow us to stay here until the government processes our working holiday visas. This has been big news for us as we already missed the Medemblik regatta and were in jeopardy of missing the rest of our scheduled events - including the World Championships. Th...

*For April and May we decide to join the two updates together as May was a complete month off for us.*

Coming off Palma we left no time in between training; we had the fire to continue to push. Just about 16 days of training before the 4 day event, we were focused on building our speed and starting abilities. With all our new kit that finally arrived from Barcelona, we had ample gear to test as a variable to improve our speed. In terms of starting we focused a lot on two boat, 2 min practices. We tried to simulate holding our lane after the start, one of the most critical moments in the race. Unfortunately, we had a poor event due to several factors. Th...

What a month March was! We had everything from the good, to the bad, to the ugly in Palma, but we came away from it with smiles on our faces and many lessons learned. When we arrived on the 3rd of March in Palma we had our shipping container scheduled to arrive the 4th so we could get straight into setting up. Long story short the container did not arrive until the 4th of April; two days into the regatta and officially one month late. Obviously this was a huge setback and stressor, but with the help of many people we were able to locate 3 different charter boats and only happened to miss about 3 days of scheduled training.

Conditions in Palma were not t...

It's official, the SPIN Sailing European crusade is now underway. After a quick break back home after Miami, we have flown out to Cascais Portugal to settle in for our time in Europe. With a short training camp in Cascais awaiting our shipping container to arrive in Palma de Mallorca, this gave us a good bit of time to plan a lot of logistics for the upcoming months and get ourselves into the right head space to be successful with our time. We are now settled into our apartment in Palma where we will spend the next month training before the Princess Sofia regatta. This is the first event on our 6 competition schedule leading into the start of the Olymp...