This past month has been action packed for our team. Continuing to train with our teammates out of Kingston, Dave Mori our coach has been pushing us really hard in preparation from our upcoming regatta season. We have spent a lot of time speed tuning, refining our rig setup and honing in on our straight line technique and speed. We also spent nearly two weeks on strictly starting and race strategy. This month has been a long one with lots of hours on the water, but our coach and us both feel it has paid dividends.
Last weekend we competed in the 9er Canadian National Championship. This was our first regatta of the season and a great way to check in on our competition before more major ones come up later on in August. Our goal for this competition was simply to execute the key points we had been working on over the summer and hopefully be within reach of some of our more experienced training partners. A shifty east breeze each day made for very stressful races, putting a lot of focus on race strategy and tactics. Throughout the regatta we felt our boat handling has been the best it has ever been; our long sessions in June appeared to pay off. Our starting was also a strong point for us as well. There were many boats being pushed over the line by current, yet we were able to hold our spot pulling the trigger at the right time for the conditions. Moreover, we were nearly always able to hold our lane and climb out of tough situations when needed, without tacking out - this will be critical as we get into stronger and larger fleets. Overall we clinched 3rd place in the competition and had multiple 1st place races, proving we have the skills to be near and at the top. We would like to thanks Dave Mori and Justin Barnes who have been our coaches for the past two months.
In about two weeks we will be starting the Olympic Classes Regatta at CORK, then heading to Newport RI for the North American Championship. We are taking these next two weeks to tweak a few miss-steps from Canadians and simply prep for two of the biggest competitions we will have this year. We will be giving another update just before we kick off CORK OCR.