We have just wrapped up a three-week training and racing session that was made up of 5 days of training in Long Beach, 3 days of racing in San Diego at the West Marine US Open Series / 29er Nationals, 3 more days of practice in San Diego, and 3 days of racing in Mission Bay at the US Sailing Youth Championships.
Youth World Training Camp
From June 11th to the 15th, we spent five days up in Long Beach training out of the US Sailing Center. This five day clinic was geared towards helping the Youth World Team prepare for racing in the Netherlands. It was a great training block and a good way to get back into racing and sailing against other boats after the lull we had following the second Youth World qualifier.
With three teams from San Diego, one from San Francisco and five from the East coast, all the best teams were there and the training was competitive and productive. The first day of the block started with a strong thermal wind building to 15 to 18 kts. The wind and the chop was great practice for Youth Worlds, but sadly, the first day was not as productive as we hoped. A couple of different reasons caused our normal coaches to be absent, so coaches had to get mixed around last minute. There were also a lot of boats who broke down and needed to go in early, so by the end of the day, there weren't many teams left.
The next three days followed a similar wind pattern - light and choppy, slowly building by the time we were going in. We focused a lot on our stability upwind and holding consistent power though chop and the underlying swell. We found that in that specific condition, we needed to keep a lot of mainsheet tension and a much tighter leech than what felt right. Downwind, we worked on moding to sail our fastest VMG to keep up with the other teams. But, our principal focus for the training block was to get back into the mindset of racing and get back into our normal racing routine. Those three days helped us a lot to get back into the mindset. The last day, we spent a lot of time working on starts and tight windward marks. It was hard and we really needed to be focused to make it around clean and without fouling other boats.
West Marine US Open Sailing Series, San Diego / 29er Nationals
After the training in Long Beach, we drove down to San Diego to take part in the West Marine US Open Sailing Series San Diego / 29er Nationals. This regatta consisted of 3 days of racing. We had the top teams from both the East and West coasts. This event was also great practice for the Youth Worlds, which we will be going to in early July. Each day of racing was different and always kept everyone on their toes. Everyone was very fast and at any time, the lead could change, so you were never truly safe until you crossed the finish line.
Day 1 started out with wind early in the morning from the South. That breeze slowly built and peaked around 12:30 PM. The race course was typically left favored because of pressure and shift. We were focused on going through all of our routines before each race and then executing a plan based on our findings. Day 1 was a strong day for us as we finished with a 1, 3, 1, and 1.
Day 2 was more challenging because both sides of the course began to pay - the left side had more pressure, but the right side would have the shift. It was hard to figure out which side would work out better than the other. We tried our best to just stay in the top three each race. At the end of day 2, we scored a 3, 2, 7, and 1.
On Day 3, the typical sea breeze filled in at 10-12 knots. At this point in the regatta, we just needed to be close to the second place team to win the regatta with a race to spare. We stuck with our game plan and ended up winning the first race of the day, winning us the regatta. Then, in the last race we had nothing to lose so we just took the opportunity to experiment with different processes.
US Sailing Youth Championships
The final event before heading off to race in Europe was the US Sailing Youth Championships, which were sailed out of Mission Bay. There were a solid number of boats for a US event, especially for one on the West coast with 18 boats out on the water. With a mix of skill levels, it was great practice and racing for everyone. This event started with everyone moving their boats from SDYC to MBYC. While some people chose to tow, we along with our training partners, Sammie/Alice and Peter/Anton, chose to sail our boats around. In total, it took us a little over 2 hours and we covered nearly 22 nm. It was a great experience and was a lot of fun.
The Youth Championship racing started with an odd wind that peaked early at around 9:30 AM. It made for a lot of interesting racing. It was hard to keep the boat moving through the steep chop and stay lifted in the shifty conditions. After keeping our plan simple, just stay lifted, we were able to end the day with all top three finishes. The second day of racing had similar wind strength, but slightly smaller chop which made keeping the boat moving slightly easier. But the wind was a little more unstable with random shifts outside of its typical oscillation range making the racing difficult. Sadly, we got caught on the wrong side of a few of the shifts and had to keep trying to climb back to the top. It wasn't our most solid day of sailing, but we learned what we could and got ourselves ready for the last four races the next day.
The last day of racing we went out with the intention of trying to pay more attention to patterns of the wind and work hard to get in phase with the wind. By the time that the first start happened, we felt extremely confident in our knowledge of what the wind was doing. Thanks to that, we were able to stay in the shooting range for second place. Then, in the last race, we were able to use that knowledge to get around the other top boats to finish second in the race and put enough boats between us and the only other boat close to us to finish second overall.
After all this training and racing, we are feeling ready to go and bring home some medals at both the Youth Worlds and the Open 29er Worlds for both Team USA and Team SDYC.