We are now counting down the days until our World Championships start in Newport, Rhode Island and we can’t wait!
Since finishing Skandia Sail for Gold Regatta with a slightly disappointing result we have had a good month away from the Elliotts. After couple of weeks off (for me at least, Kate went straight to Commodores Cup Regatta and then straight from there to the RS200 National Championships!) we were straight into training for the Worlds. This year the Worlds slightly bizarrely won’t be in Elliotts but are being held in Sonars, 4 up… enter Mary Rook. Kate, Annie and I were extremely happy with our crew work during Sail for Gold so finding a 4th was quite tricky as we don’t want to disrupt the dynamics of our team, but also want to use the 4th to add as much as possible to our current team and create a strong team of 4 like no other. Over the years Mary and I have sailed together a lot in Match Racing events and as a very good all rounded sailor with a very competitive nature, Mary is a great asset to our team and after much deliberation, will be doing bow for us freeing Kate up to take a more tactical role.
Our training started in the Sonars in Sheboygan, USA in the first week of September with a training camp racing against two of the American teams and focusing on getting used to sailing the new boats, the boat handling and tuning of them to get round the course as efficiently and quickly as possible! There was of course a few days of multiple bruises particularly for Mary and Kate! However it was a really good week and we came away confident with our handling of the boats round the course.
Next up was the get our boat on boat skills up to scratch in Sonars so after a day turn around we were training in Cowes for two days against Ian Williams and then in Weymouth for two days against Paul CJ and our Paralympic team. We had an awesome couple of days in plenty of breeze against John, Hannah and Steve with then passing on all their gems of knowledge about the boats they sail day in, day out. Many thanks to them for that!
All that brought us up to next Friday and Since then we have all had the week to ourselves and it’s quite amazing that we still all choose to go sailing in it! Annie is at the Swan World Championships this week sailing the 82ft Nikata, Kate is off to Palma for a few days, Mary is training in Weymouth in the Elliotts and I was racing with the Louise Morton and ‘the girls’ on her Quarter Toner, Espada at the weekend for the Nab Tower race.
We leave for the Worlds on Sunday, practice is Monday and racing against the 19 other teams will start Tuesday so wish us luck and keep following our progress!
Lucy x
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