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: