After a summer packed with 29er practice, clinics, regattas, and travel we felt prepared to race in the Zhik 29er Open Worlds in Valencia, Spain. So at the end of August my little brother, my skipper, my dad and I hopped on a plane and headed to Europe to compete in our first world championship event. The event was 6 days long: 3 days of qualifiers and 3 days of finals. With 6 talented US teams at the event we were ready to represent.
Sammie and I started sailing 29ers almost 3 years ago at a beginner's clinic at SDYC and have been doing it ever since. Most of the regattas we do are local with around 5 boats, so a 200 boat fleet was a big change. We were focusing on starts and feet management, as we struggled with those the most. Going into the last race of the qualifying rounds we were one position out of gold fleet. After finishing 3rd in the race we found out we were called over early at the start. With the U flag up and that being our second “UFD” we could not throw it out. Unfortunately that meant gold fleet was completely out of reach, which was hard to come to terms with because our 3rd was good enough to place us in gold. The Silver fleet was still very competitive, and we finished 12th in Silver.
This regatta was such an amazing experience and it was clear that we learned and improved so much. Racing in a large fleet at such a high level showed us how much we have left to learn and inspired us to work even harder. Although we didn’t end up with the results we were hoping for, we are so proud of our training partners and team mates Anton Schmid and Peter Joslin: 8th, and Ian and Noah Nienhyse:4th. We are so grateful for all of our sponsors and supporters who helped us get here. We hope to compete again next year!
