On August 9th I took a flight from San Diego, CA to Faro, Portugal for the 2022 ILCA 4 (Laser 4.7) World Championships which were to take place a short distance away in Vilamoura, Portugal. I arrived a few days early in order to get acclimated to the time difference as well as get a couple of practice sailing sessions in with the USA Team and Coaches (Steve Mitchell, Pedro Mascarenhas, & Marie Barrue) prior to the beginning of the regatta.
The regatta was scheduled to take place from August 13th through August 20th. The first few days of practice were similar conditions to San Diego with 6 to 8 knots of wind speed and a very little sea state.
Registration & Opening Ceremonies took place on August 13th and 14thwith racing to begin on the 15th. The ILCA 4 World Championship brought together close to 420+ participants from over 40 different nations. This was one of the largest ILCA regattas ever, and was a bit eye opening to see how the rest of the world prepares for events like this.
For the qualifying races (August 15 – 17), the wind speed increased to close to 20 knots with a very challenging & unsettling sea state of more than 3 feet of chop at times. The type of conditions we don’t see too much of in San Diego.
The remaining three days of the regatta had completely different conditions than the first three days. The final three days the wind was light and shifty where as we only got 3 out of 6 races completed. In fact the final day of racing was called off completely due to the lack of wind.
Although I didn’t perform as well as I would have liked, I did learn a lot from this experience with the assistance from the great coaching that I received. My best race of the regatta was a 34th place in race #7.
This was my 1st time attending a regatta in Europe while also racing in a World Championship regatta, and I am grateful for the opportunity.
I would like to thank the San Diego Yacht Club Competition Fund for their support. I look forward to representing San Diego Yacht Club in future regattas.
