2016 Midwinters in New Orleans

From November 23rd to 25th, I attended the USODA Midwinters in New Orleans, and this time unlike last year it was also the qualifiers for the Spring US Teams.

The qualifiers is a regatta like Team Trials, except it is an open regatta. If you do well in this event you have the possibility to represent the USA in a International event like South Americans Championship.

The venue was really nice, with wind from 5-15 knots, no current, and waves up to 2 feet tall, during the clinic we had before the event. However conditions were not so good for the regatta itself, which was supposed to be three days long. The first two days, my fleet did not race, so we only had one long day of racing. I finished 134th (out of 265 Optis), so not the best result. After this event I compared it with all my USODA regattas since I joined SFYC. I always do better when the regatta is 2-4 days of racing, so when you have several balanced days of sailing.

The first day of the regatta was basically waiting around, although my coach Nico asked us to stay focused, calm, and to not hurt ourselves. The second day we did not run races, although the Committee tried their best. They tried to run a race twice: on the first attempt I was 10th, so when they abandoned I was pretty unhappy, for the second attempt I had a bad start which got me in the back of the fleet, so that time I was happy they abandoned.

On the third and final day, the race committee managed to get 5 races off. The conditions were really shifty, with really different wind speeds, from 5 knots to 15 knots, and sometimes the waves were up to 4 feet tall. Since the conditions were so different, it was hard to keep up with the wind pattern and where it was going. Although most starts were on the pin side of the line and on the left side of the course, the wind was always shifting during the race itself. My best score in a race was 21st .

This regatta was an awesome experience just like last year, and this time most of my friends from SFYC were here with me which was really nice.

I would like to say thank you to my Mom that came with me to New Orleans and who followed me during the event. I would also like to say a big good job to Henry Boeger, my team mate who is going to the South American Championship in Paraguay, he finished 25th overall.


BREAKING NEWS: I am extremely happy and proud to announce that I have been invited to represent the USA in July at the 2017 Topsport Vlaanderen Regatta in Belgium. 


This is a picture of me sailing:


This is my whole team in a meeting before the next race:

This is me in the first race of the last day:

Picture credits: Laura Burns




This is a beautiful sunset picture:


This is Henry and I talking with Jason in the blue:


This is were all the Optis were stored:


This is all of us coming back on the first day:

Bermuda Nationals 2016 - my first international regatta!

The Bermudan Opti Nationals (organised by BODA) where held at Dockyards in Bermuda, from November 10th to 13th. This regatta had a lot of international sailors such as teams from USA, Belize, Canada and Bermuda. The Polish National Champion was also competing. As you can probably imagine, this was a tough regatta. Conditions were solid 13 knots with some times gusts to 25 knots. The waves were the toughest I think, because they were not like waves in San Francisco (long ocean waves), but they were little short chop. It was complicated, because you had to really work on getting the bow of the boat up and over the waves.

My result was not so great (38th out of 75 in Champion fleet), but again this was my first international event.

At this regatta I learned a lot of interesting things on clouds. For example, I learned that a cloud coming your way would make the wind shift right a little bit, and the same cloud with rain would make the wind shift even more right. This happened a lot on the race course. It mostly happened during the last leg, upwind to the finish. One of those times, a sailor from Canada who was in the back of the fleet ended up winning the race. This got people really frustrated, but thanks to all my mindfulness activities I managed to keep my calm and finish the race.

The best part of the event was visiting two of the three America's Cup bases. I visited Oracle and Artemis. The Oracle base was already planned, since it was organized by BODA, but the Artemis base was a surprise. The reason I got to go is because I was sailing with the Canadian  National Team, and their head coach is the friend of the head coach of Artemis. In the bases, we were allowed to see the boats, but in the Oracle base we were also allowed to touch the boats, which for me is just amazing.

My awesome brother Yann had a great regatta in Green fleet, he managed to pull of the 2nd place!!!

Overall I had an excellent time there, even if I did not get the results I wanted. After all this was my first international regatta ever, and it was awesome.

Thank you Belvedere Cove Foundation for supporting me it really was useful !

This is me sailing out of the harbour:



This is Yann during a work out with the Green Fleet:




This is Yann sailing:





This the Champ fleet waiting for the signal to sail out:



These are the two AC 45T boats I saw: