By Taisei Hatter
I arrived in St. Petersburg on the evening of Thursday February 6th. From the airport, my host, Mr. Robert Hopkins, took me, his son Robert, and another visiting sailor Crew Fritch, directly to St. Petersburg Yacht to show us the Optis we would be sailing in the Valentine's Day Regatta.
The next day we headed to SPYC in the morning for the practice clinic. We rigged our boats and had a meeting. After that we sailed out to the ocean to practice. Only about 50 boats were there for the practice. The wind was 8-10 knots. Lunch was on the water as they literally threw the sandwiches at us from the coach boats. We finished practice in the afternoon.
On Saturday, check starts at 7:30am. I decided to sail with the Gold Fleet as the ages of the sailors in Gold were similar to mine. The wind was extremely light and were only able to sail one race at midday. I finished in 67th place.
On Sunday the wind was a little stronger in the morning. They got off the first race on time, but halfway through, the wind died and more than half of the fleet did not make it across the finish line by the time limit. So, they ended up throwing out that race. The final race of the day was completed and I finished in 48th place.
In the end I got 114th out of 182 boats. In St. Petersburg there is usually more wind in the morning than the afternoon because the sea breeze from the previous day is still kicking in during the morning but dies out throughout the day. I was treated well by my host family and everybody at SPYC. I had a good experience and I am glad I had the opportunity to sail in this regatta and represent SDYC.