Blog

By Airwaves Writer Taylor Penwell
Anderson and Brockbank Interview: Introduction
Alec Anderson and Chris Brockbank were born and raised in the BVI. Both teammates attended the same pre-school, graduated from the same high school, and together have represented the territory in sailing on a number of occasions. The duo has their goal set on reaching the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janerio, Brazil. They are competing in the ISAF Sailing World Cup in Miami from January 23^rd to 30^th and must finish as the top North American team in order to clinch a berth for the Olympics. The team is an inspiration for youth sailing in the BVI and embodies what it means to set and achieve your goals. I sat down with Alec and Chris a few weeks back to talk training, campaigning, and what it takes to chase down the dream of going to the Olympics.
What made you guys want to start the Olympic campaign?
Alec: I didn’t make any one decision that I wanted to go to the Olympics. I got involved at a young age in racing at the end of my Optimist career, I got hooked immediately with international racing, I went to school and all four years during school I was planning on carving a path to get to the Olympics. I called Chris about starting a campaign the beginning of spring semester of my senior year, and after graduation we decided to pursue it.
Chris: It was really a matter of opportunity. The vision of sailing in the Olympics wasn’t really there for me until Alec came to me with a proposal to start an Olympic campaign in the 49er class. Over these three years my investment into it has grown, and it all has become more of a reality and became the goal.
Why did you pick the 49er to campaign?
Chris: Ideally, it was Alec’s goal to get to the Olympics in the Laser, but he struggled with his light weight in the class, and he realized that the next best fit was the 49er class. It was a quicker boat to learn than the 470, and I don’t know if I would have done a 470 campaign.
Alec: It was a fun boat, and the sport is going high-performance, so we chose the 49er.
Chris: We got in touch with Thomas Barrows who had a 49er over in St. Thomas, and we set up a long-term lease with him to spend a few months in the boat, and [see] if it was something we liked, and it all happened pretty quickly after that. We had Thomas’ crew come down and give us an introduction to the boat, rigging the boat, splicing — just the basic stuff, stuff you don’t learn growing up in Optimists and Lasers.
How would you compare the 49er to any other boat that you have sailed?
Alec: It’s a thrill! The immediate thing I noticed was the time you have to put in to prepare the boat. It’s a high-performance boat for a reason — everything’s really light, strong, tedious, full of tiny parts — and the boat takes a lot more mental effort, but that being said, the reward for having a boat set up nicely, going fast, doing well, is really satisfying, and it’s worth it in the end. Whereas a Laser, you hike your face off for three hours and you go the same speed the whole time; you can’t improve the balance or speed of the boat with tuning.
Have you ever sailed high-performance boats before the 49er?
Alec: Nope, we jumped right into the deep end, and I had very little knowledge of fine-tuning on a high-performance boat.
Chris: The IC24s and college 420s did nothing to prepare us.

Graduating from Roger Williams University in 2013, Alec Anderson was a three-time All American who was nominated for the prestigious College Sailor of the Year in both his Junior and Senior Year.

Did Optimist sailing with large numbers of boats prepare you for the 49er?
Alec: No matter what you sail, the Optimist prepares you.
Did what you sailed in college prepare you in any form for this Olympic campaign?
Alec: Technically speaking, no. The comparison of a FJ to a 49er is remote to none, but on the theoretical side of things, it helped with focusing on being spotless with your boat-handling, your dedication and commitment — what it means to be excited to go out and practice every day and be excited to practice the same stuff. Sailing six days a week with the same people in the same boats, it gets monotonous, and if you put the little bit of extra effort in, you will find how it will be rewarding on the race course. That was the biggest lesson I took away from college sailing. Along with the strategy, tactics and rule talks in those four years.
Who did you work with for tuning?
Chris: Thomas Barrows’ crew, Nate Rosenberg, a few of our first coaches, and lastly we are very sociable on the circuit, so we make sure we forge as many relationships as we can so we can pick up as much information as we can.
What is the most challenging part of sailing the 49er?
Chris: Controlling it, the boat-handling — when a gust hits, you have to be ready and be proactive to be ahead of the game. As soon as you miss something, it can affect your position really quickly. Getting clear off the start with so many boats is important, since there are so many boats in the pack.
What is the ideal weight for the 49er?
Alec: About 15-20 pounds heavier than us. Anywhere from 345-365 pounds is the ideal range. Some of the older teams are closer to the lower limit, and some of the younger teams are at the higher limit.
Being from the BVI where the winds are strong, do you feel like heavy wind events are ideal for you guys? What kind of winds do you feel most comfortable in, or excel in?
Chris: We are 20 pounds lighter than most teams, and we are comfortable in lighter winds (5-12, 15 knots).
Alec: The higher the winds, the worse we do, typically, because of our light weight, and even if we sail flawlessly boat-handling-wise around the course, the small difference in speed can put us in the back. We enjoy when it’s a little lighter, but when its really light it’s anyone’s game. You can only go so fast in 5 knots. I think our best day would be 8-11 knots, where we can start double trapezing, and the bigger teams are not quite there yet.
Chris: The ideal range is 10 knots.
How many 49ers are at the event?
Alec: Typically 25-40 other boats on the starting line. So 60-90 boats at a large event.

Chris Brockbank has represented the BVI in a number of international match racing events and is known throughout the BVI for his incredible work ethic and positive attitude. Chris is currently studying business at the H. Lavity Stoutt College in the BVI.

What was the first thing you guys did for fundraising/raising money for the campaign?
Chris: We approached our local community, here in the BVIs.
Alec: We weren’t afraid in the slightest bit to ask anyone and everyone for money. I think that’s the most important thing when you are doing something like this, you can’t feel bad asking for money, if you are trying to achieve your goals and follow your dream and do what you love, you should really be willing to do anything for it.
What do you do with the National Olympic Committee for the campaign? Did you propose a strategic plan?
Alec: They have been helping my sailing since I was in the Optimist, because I was always a BVI prospect for going to the Games, and the support for the campaign was there. We just had to approach them with the new vision that we had, and they were on board.
Chris: We applied for funding, and a couple months later it was accepted and we got it, and we get a scholarship from the Olympic Solidarity Program for Emerging Nations, so we get a stipend from the BVI National Olympic Committee each month to keep training.
Routine and training: what kind of things do you guys do to prepare for an event? Let’s talk about nutrition? How important is eating right to you guys?
Alec: It is something we have learned a ton about in the last few years. Having to put on weight and putting on weight in a healthy manner requires a much higher understanding of nutrition then the average Joe. If you are not counting the calories and the macronutrients … you don’t know what you are consuming, then you are not in control of how you are sculpting your body and how you affect your body. It is not somewhat important, it is absolutely paramount that nutrition is a top priority, because it is a variable you can control — and there are so many variables in sailing that we can’t control.
When we are in Miami, nutrition is equally important as the gym and the sailing sessions. Not just to gain weight, but to try to maintain it. When we have a big day, we can’t eat enough.
What about working out? What sizes were you guys before the campaign? What was the target?
Chris: Both of our goals were to get bigger. With Alec driving and me crewing, we had different targets in the gym, both trying to put on weight. I do more cardio and high-intensity stuff, and Alec more heavy weightlifting.
What difference in weight are you at now compared to when you started the campaign?
Alec: I have gained 15 pounds, and Chris has gained 20 pounds.
How did you guys find your coach for the campaign? What should a good coach be?
Chris: We didn’t jump straight on a coach; we worked with a number of coaches for a week at a time or so and got a lot of different insight. But the coach is more of the big picture — not just good on the water, but also a good manager. Someone who gets up and is enthusiastic about the day and gets us going and helps with the managerial side of things like fundraising, and helps take the weight off our shoulders a little, but also someone who can go out on the water and get us focused on it all. Because there are two of us on the boat, it’s not just a one-man boat. Obviously, we are working together as a team, and as soon as we stop working together as a team, we need someone to put us back together and get our mind straight again. The coach is more of a psychologist, too.
Alec: How did we pick Chris Waters? We worked with him in the past, since he was our junior sailing coach at the Royal BVI Yacht Club, and Brockbank worked for him at the sailing camp. We all sailed together and all spent a lot of time sailing on the match racing circuit together, and when he became available on the market, we snatched him right up. And what makes a good coach is being able to spend the remainder of the day off the water with that person. And you can have the best coach in the world who knows everything about the boat you are sailing, but if you don’t get along outside of that, it is not going to work. At the end of the day, we are our own best coaches — if we can’t recognize things we are doing wrong, we won’t be able to improve on them. We have to be able to self-evaluate and critique ourselves, but having that third party there to make sure we are getting along, and that the communication is good and that we have enough money in the bank, that we have food in our lunch bag, that is what makes a good coach, and Chris is our guy.
How does mental psyche play into your sailing?
Chris: It’s really important, especially on the course, because if one of us isn’t happy with something, we need to get past it really and think about what’s next to come.
Alec: We spend more time with each other than anyone else in the world for these last years. For the last two and half years, and for the next four, we are going to spend more time with each other than anyone else. Is that both what we want? Probably not; I’d like to spend more time with my girlfriend and my family, but it’s what we need to do, and what I’m willing to do and what I want to do to achieve my goal. And finding tools and mechanisms to help achieve that without killing each other is a big part of this. We recently hired a team psych who we are working with. It is not out of the ordinary; a lot of teams do it, we just took a little longer to realize how valuable it can be. And it’s a chance to air out any problems we have between each other and with the campaign to keep the wheel rolling.
What is the next event you will be competing in?
Chris: We our coming up to our last qualifying event, which is the ISAF World Sailing Cup in Miami from January 23-30 and we are up against the U.S. and Canada for the last berth for the 2016 Games. With all the teams having shown that they can be in the top and that it comes down to who can peak at the right moment, we need to put all of our training together in the past three years and put it together for this event.
Alec: We are in a great position, because no one is expecting us to qualify except our fan club here in the BVI. Besides that fan club, we have no pressure on us to qualify … and we have nothing to lose — and we are campaigning again so there is no pressure to make it now, because we have another chance.
Where do you have to finish to qualify for the Games at this event?
Alec: We have to be the top North American boat. It’s the last North American continental qualifying opportunity, so there is one spot out of the 20 spots out of the Olympics that is allocated to the top North American team in Miami, and out of the 3-4 Americans and the few Canadians and us, whoever is the top 49er out of those teams will earn the berth for their country. If it’s us, we go to the Games and if it is the U.S., then they decide amongst them who goes and the same for Canada. So top team out of N.A. goes.
What advice would you give someone who is interested in campaigning for the Olympics? 
Alec: Any excuse to not campaign is not good enough. If you did it for two years and it didn’t work out, OK. At least you can say you did it. You don’t want to be thinking, “I wonder what it would have been like if I would have done that” your whole life. If you live til you’re 80 and you graduate college in your early twenties, that’s a long time thinking you could have done something that you didn’t.
Chris: Just go for it. It sounds like a really big deal at times, but it’s a lot easier and a lot more accessible than you realize, and you just have to reach out and grab it.
For more information on the Anderson/Brockbank Campaign or to help support their campaign, go to their website, http://andersonbrockbank49er.com/.