The 420 Midwinter Championship is arguably the most competitive 420 regatta on the circuit. Each year, teams from all over the country make their way to Jenson Beach, Florida over President’s Day weekend to battle it out. This is a particularly challenging event for teams from the north who have not been training on a consistent schedule. This year there were 92 teams at the championship. The Annapolis Yacht Club team of Nick Floyd and crew Lilli Salvesen found themselves on the podium in second place at the end of the tough three day event. Lilli was the top placing female and is our Sail1Designer of the Month. Congrats Lilli and Nick! Here is a brief interview with Lilli.
S1D: Where did you grow up sailing?
LS: I grew up sailing in Annapolis, Maryland. I have sailed out of Annapolis Yacht Club the entire time.
S1D: Who are your sailing role models?
LS: My sailing role model would probably be my high school coach Alana O’Rilley. I had to learn to skipper 420’s this fall so I could be the third skipper for the Annapolis High School team, and she has been encouraging me to keep skippering the entire time.
S1D: What is your training regimen like, how did you prepare for Midwinter’s since it is wintertime in Annapolis?
LS: I have a couple friends that like to frostbite on big boats, and a couple of my more extreme friends like to frostbite lasers, but I hate sailing in the cold so I stick to working out with Harry Legum at Annapolis Sailing Fitness.
S1D: How did you and Nick start sailing together?
LS: Nick asked me to sail with him for Orange Bowl. I was very excited for an opportunity to sail with someone new.
S1D: What came together at midwinter’s to get you guys on the podium?
LS: The great thing about sailing with Nick is that even though we are both short tempered we are quick to forget. If there was an incident on the water while we were sailing, by the time we had crossed the finish line we had forgotten what had made us angry. It also helped that we both know a lot about tactics. My goal as a crew is to never stop talking. If I see anything on the race course and I mean anything, I tell my skipper about it. This communication is very important because it allows nick to have a mental image of the race course in his head. This is a lot more information than most skippers have that enables nick to focus on boat speed and have more faith in the tactical advice that I give him during the race.
S1D: How did you and Nick prepare for each day of racing?
LS: A lot of sailors have a strict pre race routine, but Nick and I always felt better when we were more relaxed pre race. We would go out on the water adjust our settings according to the conditions. Then go upwind with one of our friends to make sure we felt fast. We would go find Alana and see what trends she was seeing on the water. After that we would wait in a spot where we could look upwind and joke around until the race committee went into sequence. Then we would check our upwind angle by rounding the race committee boat and start the race.
S1D: What are your goals for the upcoming sailing season?
LS: I am going off to college next year so I have to coach sailing so I will have spending money while I’m at school. I am planning on sailing youth champs with Nick. After our results at Midwinters, my goal is to win Youth Champs. There has also been discussion in the family about me skippering for my little brother, Nicholas Salvesen at the North Americans regatta at Brant Beach Yacht Club. He is 13 years old and just moving up from Optis. So I am excited for a chance to teach him how to crew. Hopefully there won’t be too much fighting!
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A Sailor's Response to the Rules that Apply to Them; 2014 Season
Sail1Design welcomes your thoughts in our forum at the bottom of this article. Enjoy.
Earlier this winter, coaches from all over ICSA met in Utah to discuss the new year of college sailing. What resulted was a number of changes in the rules and regulations that apply to all the teams and events within ICSA, and it seems this year was the year of rather progressive and drastic changes. It is clear by the tenor of some of these changes that college sailing seems to be going the route of the NCAA, with stricter time restraints and even rules regarding sailor eligibility. This shift is admittedly extremely gradual, and will inevitably have its perks and downsides, but the most important thing for this season is adjusting to the rules that will apply right now. This article, therefore, is a response from me and others involved in college sailing to the most dramatic changes in the 2014 seasons.
The rule change that stood out to me the most at first is the new policy in which there will be a 10-race limit per day in college regattas. This means that after both divisions have sailed 10 races, no more races may be sailed on Saturday. By nature Sundays often have much fewer races because of the “no sail after” time, which is now 3 pm for most events. At first, this new rule seems like a bit of a hindrance. After all, the ultimate goal of any regatta is to get as many races as there are teams, because the more races there are the fairer the results become. But, upon further consideration, I think that this rule will provide a lot of benefits to sailors in certain venues. Everyone has sailed that regatta: 2 fleets of boats so breaks are minimized, or maybe even rotations on the water so you never get a break. When they do bring you in for “lunch”, you have just about enough time to viciously struggle out of your dry-suit and dash to the bathroom before they are calling for your division to get back on the water, where you will likely keep sailing until after sunset. These regattas, while noteworthy because they usually accomplish the desired number of races, often leave the sailors fatigued and dazed beyond recall. Your coach will ask you about an instance in the race and you find yourself drawing a blank because the entire day has blended into an endless loop of a W-4. With a 10- race limit, timing becomes more relaxed. If the sailors need a 30-minute break for lunch because the conditions are particularly brutal, they can take it because the race committee is only trying for 10 races, not 16. Also, this rule means that Saturdays will likely end earlier, giving college sailors (who are also college students) time to unwind and do work before they have to get up in the morning and sail all day again. This is particularly important for venues like Navy, which hold big inter-conference regattas that require most teams to travel far from home by van or even plane. These events absorb entire weekends, so having the spare time that the race limit can provide to do even a few regular student things will be of the upmost value.
The theme of some other proposed rules was increasing the safety precautions for the sailors. Concussions within college sailing have been increasing steadily over the years, and understandably so with a big pole made of metal hovering a couple of inches over your head whenever you are in a boat. One proposed solution was making helmets mandatory for all sailors; but this did not pass. The cost per school would be very high, and it did not seem like the most reasonable solution to the voters (and, more likely, all of the sailors who refused to wear helmets.) Some more experimental methods have been proposed, and have started to be tested. For example, Fran Charles (head coach at MIT) has proposed that all booms be made of carbon fiber, so as to reduce the weight of the boom and therefore the risk of serious head injury. All of the FJ’s at MIT already have carbon fiber booms, and they seem to sail as well as the normal collegiate FJ’s. The only difference is that they do not have a track to feed the foot of the sail through, and so a clew strap is necessary. These often break, and so present a sort of nuisance to the sailors right now, but if this flaw gets perfected I think that the carbon fiber booms are an excellent solution to the safety problem. Harvard has gone another route; two of the boats in their fleet of FJ’s have booms that are about 6 inches taller than normal. The masts are also longer, so there is no change in the sail area, but this is still the more controversial method because it may have a more influential change in the way the boats sail. 8 other schools are following suit with this, and have been approved for use for these new masts. Only testing of the two methods over the season will tell which is more effective.
Overall, it seems that the committee is trying to change the dynamics of college sailing to better fit the health of the athletes that compete in it. “At the NEISA annual meeting it was encouraging to see how healthy the conference is,” says Peter Bailey, Brown University Junior and Undergraduate Vice President of NEISA, “the leaders are taking steps to make college sailing more safe and competitive.” The more the rules change to be mindful of the sailors, the more that college sailing will start drifting towards the standards of the NCAA. I think I speak for all of us when I say it will be extremely interesting to see how the sport will develop in the near future.
Here’s a LINK to the official ICSA Procedural Rules
Tactics With Mike: Regatta Goals and an Effective Debrief
To learn more about Sail1Design Performance Coaching,click here!
I am changing the way I set goals and debrief at regattas. Why? Because I Just got done coaching racing skills leading up to a Midwinters in Miami and in describing to them my approach I realized my method was flawed. I realized that I do not write down specific achievable goals that measure process (not results). And I don’t consistently review and improve this process. (To read Mike’s earlier piece on Goal setting, CLICK HERE)
Sure, we talk about a few goals, and we try and remember to talk about what we can do better, but not in a clean consistent way.
Here are the goals we came up with for the team I was coaching for their Midwinters.
Here is a deeper explanation of the Goals
Start: The start goals were based on an inconsistent approach to the practice starts I had observed.
· They tended to set up at random times making it difficult to know when to accelerate
· If they thought they were early, they would often put the bow down, which is a sure way to lose their hole
· Struggling with when to accelerate to the line
Boat Handling: The sets and douses were excellent. They just needed to clean up the turns.
· Occasionally, they would slow down while they prepared to turn. They need to stay full hike, trimmed right, and on the correct angle up to the moment the turn starts. Then when the turn is done, they need to be on the new course at full speed ASAP.
· We worked on smoothing the turn itself
· For big turns, it is difficult to find the correct angle right away, so using the mast head fly to get close was a handy tool
Speed: There always has to be a speed component to goals.
· We tried to eliminate the number of times the driver would “space out” and drift off the wind.
· The rig tune sets up the power, so that is important to get right!
Other: This is the catch all category that often has to do with attitude
· We clearly defined everyone’s roles in practice. We wanted to make sure they stuck to those roles
· With those roles, we defined clear concise communication. But in training, we figured out that they would occasionally forget and either not communicate what they were supposed to or communicate something that was supposed to be communicated by someone else
· Helicopter: This comes from a theory that if you were plopped by helicopter into a boat halfway through a race you would have no idea what happened to get there and therefore only focus on getting to the finish as fast as possible.
· The last two make sure they actually reviewed the goals after each race, and were not afraid to modify them if they were not fitting the needs exactly, or they learned of others they needed to add.
Debrief: After each race, in their wet-notes, they rated each 1-5. And added a comment if there was something specific that could be done to improve. One person (the tactician in this case) was in charge of moderating. Their job was to do it quickly (without rushing), keep it positive, and write it down.
Essentially, the team did well on most of the goals. But there were some very specific things to improve on:
· Start
o Stay high instead of killing speed low and losing their hole
o In the real starts, since there was more traffic and dirty air than their practice starts, they needed to accelerate to the line sooner
· Boat Handling
o Nothing specific for that race
· Speed
o The driver fell off the wind a few times, so besides just plain concentrating harder, the team decided to make sure the trimmer was more aware of this so he could jump in and make the driver aware of it before the boat lost too much
o While they set the rig for the conditions most of the time, the lulls were big and it was more important to set up the rig looser (more powered). That way they could get through these lulls without losing too much.
· Other
o The person sitting in the mast position (2nd back behind the bow person) needed to be more involved in both keeping track of compass numbers and discussing them with the tactician
o The bow person needed to be really clear about the way he called traffic, particularly approaching starboard tackers.
o They needed to add some tactical goals to the list
Based on the debrief, that night, we had a discussion on how to set some tactical goals. Specifically, I observed from the coach boat that they were spending too much time in dirty air, and they needed to avoid laylines/ other bad lanes. So here is what we came up with:
The process worked surprisingly well to get their process on track. But it did some other beneficial things we had not thought of.
An interesting and unexpected result was that it tabled any tension during the race. Everyone knew that if they had a problem, there would be a process to address it, so they did not feel they needed to bring it up until after the race. It allowed them to put it behind them (that helicopter theory) and get on with the race.
Another surprise result is that it addressed issues without it becoming personal. If there is no method and someone wants to bring something up, they have to initiate it and it can be awkward. By having a moderator there and a list to go over, it there is always a way to bring things up more casually therefore keeping everyone’s attitude positive.
The process works if the moderator keeps it brief and positive. The goals and debrief are to enhance the racing skills by improving always in almost real time. If instead it drags on, gets negative or the conversation goes into a rat-hole, then it will detract from racing and that defeats the purpose.
Different teams will have different goals depending on skill level, what mistakes they recently made, or just the way they approach sailing. The goals may change over time. Perhaps some universal goals like roles and communication should always stay on, but others will likely go once it becomes habit. For example, the tactician may get good at lanes so we take that off and maybe put doing a better job looking for wind on. Each new one will likely be more refined and there is always something to improve on, so they will always be there no matter how good we get!
2014 J/24 Midwinters Daily Report and Results
BECKER’S BLOG, By Airwaves Writer/Coach Geoff Becker
Check out Becker’s Blog, a compilation of regatta reports/tips on Airwaves! Geoff’s reports are not the same old regatta report. He spends time offering insightful thoughts, tactical/technical advice, and his reports have become for many a very valuable virtual coach!
Team Helly Hansen
Skipper, John Mollicone; Tactician, Tim Healy; Trimmer,Geoff Becker Mast: Collin Leon; Bow, Gordon Borges
Day 3 – Final Day
2 races (all races course 4, 4 legs w/downwind finish) Wind 6-12 knots from the SE.
For the final day of the J-24 Midwinters, at the Coral Reef YC in Miami, FL, it was more of the same in both conditions and results for Team Helly Hansen. Remarkably, the conditions were exactly the same as Day 1 and 2, with a light to moderate SE breeze with very little change in direction during the day. Going into the final Day, only 2 races remained of the scheduled 10 for the regatta. Our team had a 7 point lead over second place and 8 points over third. The regatta was being scored with one throw out race and our worst finish beginning the final day was a fifth place in race 2. This meant a good score in the first race of the day could lock up the regatta for us.
After considering our scoring options, we decided to sail our own race in Race 9, using the same strategies as Days 1 and 2 and stay clear of other boats as much as possible. We were able to get a great start in the middle of the starting line and jump out in the front pack right away. From there we worked our way to the front and were able to hold the lead to win Race 9 winning the J-24 Midwinter Championship for the second consecutive year.
Knowing our throw out race was a keeper race, it was tempting for us to aim our focus on the boats behind us in the standings and cause them to have a bad race and use our throw out that way. We instead decided that what had been working for us the first 2 days was a much better plan and we had the confidence that even if the first race didn’t work out, we could make our that plan work for the second race.
As I have talked about in my other race blogs, our team has a very ritualistic and effective routine each day before getting to the racecourse. Because of that, we are normally well prepared for the first race of the day and quite often we are able to sail at a high level in the first race of a day. This regatta illustrated that as we won the first race each of the three days. That confidence added to our decision to come out and sail our best race in Race 9.
Our takeaways from Day 3 are…
1. Keep to your routine every day.
2. Sailing your own race is often the best way to score well.
3. The five members of Team Helly Hansen are the reason we sail as well as we do!!
Final Results
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Day 2
4 races (all races course 4, 4 legs w/downwind finish)
Wind 6-12 knots from the SE.
Day 2 of the J-24 Midwinters is in the books and with 8 races completed, 2 remaining, Team Helly Hansen still holds the overall lead. The conditions today were very similar to Day 1 in wind speed, direction and the amount of wind shifts. That is to say that while the wind velocity did oscillate up and down some, the direction remained relatively consistent with a total range of only 10-15 degrees during the day. With the somewhat consistent breezes, the most important race factors became boat speed and positioning to make gains on the racecourse.
Because boat speed was so important today, we made sure to check our setup before each race to make sure we could get the most from our boat for the conditions. Rig tension, genoa halyard tension and genoa lead position are always important speed factors and with such consistent winds like today, and those and other settings were crucial to make sure we had speed on the first upwind leg.
As for our strategies during the race, we also considered the fact that most of our gains would come from boat speed and not from wind shifts. Because of that, we looked for the areas of the course that seemed to have the most pressure and stay out of the bigger holes on the course if at all possible. In some ways that can be easier, because looking for wind is one thing, guessing if the new wind is a lift or a header can be much more difficult. Since we were mostly concerned about more wind vs. less wind, identifying those areas with stronger puffs was our primary goal.
After looking for the areas on the course we thought had the most wind, our final big picture strategy was to make sure we were able to sail our boat at our best speed. That meant, like on Day 1, we preferred to get in our own water without being affected by nearby boats preventing us from sailing our best course. As a result, we were quick to tack away from packs of boats, especially shortly after a start or mark rounding, in order to get clear and have freedom to make our boat sail at full speed. Sometimes we were even willing to sail away from what could be more wind if we had a nearby boat affecting our overall speed.
Having the freedom to sail your boat at its best by avoiding the negative effects of nearby boats, is a strategy that will work in a large percentage of sailboat races. Of course in most races, there are many other factors to consider, but having the ability to set your boat up the way you want and sail your own fastest course is a great starting point.
Our takeaways from Day 2 are…
1. Make sure your boat is set up for the race conditions.
2. Look for larger puffs when the wind isn’t shifting much.
3. Sail in your own water and use the freedom to sail your fastest
Results after day 2
__________________________________________
Day 1 4 races (all races course 4, 4 legs w/downwind finish) Wind 6-12 knots from the SE.
The forecast for Day 1 at the J-24 Midwinters predicted 15 knots, or more, from the southeast, however, the breeze that arrived was somewhat less. A 10-12 knot SE breeze for Race 1 slowly died to 5-8 knots during Race 2 and then picked up again to 8-10 knots for Races 3 and 4. During the day, while the breeze strength varied, the direction remained relatively consistent from the southeast. Team Helly Hansen sailed well today, with 1st in Races 1, 3 and 4, and a 5th in Race 2 to take the overall lead after Day 1.
Keys to our success today included keeping the boat powered up, sailing at full speed whenever possible and sailing in our own water. As the wind decreased today, we would try and keep the boat more powered up on the windward legs. To do this, we paid close attention as to not over trim the genoa and keep from pinching, especially in any chop or waves. By sailing a little lower at times and keeping the trim on the loose side, we were able to keep the forward speed up and carry better momentum trough the lighter spots and occasional choppy waves.
Another key for us today was to keep space from other boats and sail in our own water. Today, this meant picking lanes upwind that allowed us the freedom to sail the boat at the angle we felt was best for us. When other boats are near us in a race, we often need to adjust our trim or sailing angle to avoid feeling the effects of the other boat. For example, when a boat is off our leeward bow, it might be necessary to sail a higher course to avoid falling into that boat’s backwind. Today, and in many instances, when we caught ourselves changing our sailing mode based on the position of another boat, we noticed we were not sailing our best speed or course. In those cases, we would look for a way to free ourselves from other boats and find our own water where we could sail our own race.
Putting your boat in a position to sail your own mode and then keeping the boat rolling through the lulls in the breeze, can make a big difference when sailing in lighter or dying winds. Since the winds today were not all that shifty, the focus on the upwind legs definitely shifted to boat speed over wind shifts. It is often possible to pass, or beat boats that might have a speed advantage if you can sail free in your own water. Even a fast boat will slow down when forced to adjust to another boat with better position, and if you are able to do your own thing, you can find yourself working your way toward the front of the fleet, by slowing down less.
Our takeaways from Day 1 are…
1. Keep the boat powered up and full speed in light wind and lulls
2. Sail in your own water whenever possible.
3. Use good position to sail your boat in your best mode.
Results after Day one:
1 13/ 5235 Helly Hansen Mollicone, John/Becker, Geoff/Healy, Tim/Leon, Collin/Borges, Gordon 1 5 1 1 8
2 28/ 799 USA 799 Brown, Robby/Hyatt, Ron/Liebel, Mark/Rubin, Jeff/Blodgett, Arthur 3 2 3 2 10
3 30/ 5432 Honey Badger Odenbach, Travis/Wilson, Patrick/Milez, Rossi/Morgan, Chris/Williams, Emery 2 1 5 8 16
4 90/ 4618 Scaramoush Olcese, Luis/Sas, Christian/Raffo, Joe/Razetto, Joaquin/Stewart, Alek 4 4 6 3 17
5 14/ 2917 Long Shot Poulson, John/Viladabro, Nate/Fisher, Doug/Brills, Rob/Kaidos, Stephen 5 3 9 4 21
6 19/ 5287 Team Tar Heel Bill, Peter/Abdullah, Paul/Griffin, Scott/Smith, Scott/Gilliam, Tucker 7 11 2 5 25
7 23/ 2785 Al White, Carter/White, Molly/Klein, Mark/Gold, Barbara/Lopez, Steve 6 7 9/20% 6 28
8 26/ 5277 Gill Racing Team Dieball, Skip/Shaffer, Chris/Ewerson, Geoff/Wiggins, Bill/Gemperline, Mike 8 12 7 9 36
9 22/ 2314 Zia Frisch, Patrick/Dillard, Lori/Rech, David/Marshall, Stephen/Humphreys, John 10 6 10 13 39
10 18/ 5476 Velocidad Stone, Christopher/Fitzgerald, Tim/Murphy, Patrick/Russell, Brad/Toney, Doug 11 9 16 7 43
11 27/ 78 Buschwhacher Busch, Dan/McJames, Bill/Heath, Bill/Muller, Peter/Surguy, John 12 8 19 12 51
12 20/ 4025 Lifted Maloney, Ben/Naidoo, Erwin/Oulahen, Evan/Leighton, Katrina/Layton, Hugh 14/20% 19 8 11 52
13 29/ 451 J-Peas Anstey, Paul/Smyth, Kyle/Schmitz, Cheryl/Gallagher, Kevin/Drake, Brian 17 10 14 16 57
14 00/ 3336 Summertime Treese, Taylor/Kinsman, Bob/Stukus, Chris/Bourke, Jerry 15 18 12 14 59
15 25/ 2843 Muy Muy Sly, Patricio/Mintzias, Claudio/Mendoza, Ernesto/Sein-Messer, Lorie/Renan, Atilio 16 13 11 20 60
16 10/n3416 Scouts Honor Bill, Jim/deLisser, Eamon/Banks, Tim/Aydelotte, Jillian/Galvin, Isabel 13 17 15 15 60
17 34/ 230 Joe Cool Baugh, Lionel/Sanchez, Pilar/Ferres, Mauricio/Urquiola, Christina/Billar, Andres 20 15 13 15/20% 63
18 50/ 216 Team Exit Strategy Jarchow, Jr., Rick/Noonan, Bobby/King, Jack/Martinez, V. Andres 19 14 20 19 72
19 21/ 4242 Mobile Home Rathbun, Timothy/Soya, Bernie/Holts, Lynn/Dybas, John/Dybas, Bev 21 16 21 17 75
20 70/ 5333 Scouts Pride Sprague, Gary/Walker, Trish/Kvaltine, Scott/Scheuermann, Taylor/Manson, Nikki 14 24 18 21 77
21 80/ 99 I’ll Go Segal, Zachery/Wemple, Allyson/Kresge, Dan/Chavez, Jason 24 22 17 23 86
22 16/ 5020 Dr Feelgood Lai, Lambert/DePeters, Jack/Gardner, Edgar/Sorlie, Paul 18 23 24 22 87
J 24 MIDWINTER 2014 CORAL REEF YACHT CLUB
Friday, February 21, 2014 4 races scored Provisional results
Life After College (Sailing, that is)
Sail1Design would like to welcome our newest writer, Sara Morgan Watters. Ms. Watters is a former St. Mary’s College All-American dinghy sailor, has a great deal of coaching experience, and will be reporting for Sail1Design from her new home in New Zealand. We are excited to learn more about youth and one-design sailing from Sara Morgan in the coming months, so stay tuned here for those articles, and also for an exciting youth sailing exchange program announcement coming up soon!
A lot of people talk and write about the transition from high school to college sailing, (see Grace Lucas’s From High School Newbie to College Recruit, or Lydia Whiteford’s Transitioning from High School to College Sailing)but what about life after college sailing? There are many different directions you can take including professional sailing which was just discussed in an article by Sail1Design, Steve Hunt in Paid for your Passion: From College to Pro Sailing. You could also plan an Olympics, or just sail for fun. Here I’m going to tell you about how I approached life after college sailing, in which I was able to pursue two of my passions; traveling and sailing.
It was three years ago this month that I boarded a plane for Barcelona and didn’t come back until two and a half years later. Although I hadn’t anticipated staying in Spain for so long, after graduating in 2010 from St. Mary’s College of Maryland I knew I wanted to immerse myself in a different culture, learn Spanish and if possible keep sailing.
Once I was settled in Barcelona with a place to live, a good sense of my way around the city and some jobs teaching private English classes, I started to focus on how I could get involved in sailing. Hoping to find a job coaching, with the help of my Basque (a region of Spain) roommate, I sent out a grammatically sound email about coaching opportunities to just about every club up and down the Cataluña coast, the area of Spain where Barcelona lies. Of the twenty or so clubs that I emailed, I heard back from two. Perhaps, this was because the Spanish economy was so poor that hiring (an American) just isn’t in the budget nor does the government make it easy to contract foreigners.
However, I did receive one promising response from a small club that had a strong junior sailing team based out of a club on the beach about 50 miles south of Barcelona. The club leader who happened to also be associated with the Catalan Sailing Federation, was keen on the idea of offering “Sailing in English”, as I was calling it, to their Opti race team. He was able to use my U.S. Sailing Level 1 certification to issue me their equivalent certification to be able to coach (more or less) legally. As I suppose it is the case in most places, knowing the right person makes the biggest difference and little did I know this first contact would set me on a path that I’m still on today.
The next summer, 2012 I tried again. With the help of my new “connections”, I got a one-off job teaching “sailing in English” for a small group of Opti sailors at a much bigger club 25 miles north of Barcelona. Although they let me drive a motor boat when I really wasn’t legally supposed to and I was getting paid under the table, I had my own class of Opti racers who were eager to learn English. After all, speaking English is “cool”. This week went so well they hired me for another week to coach a regular summer week of beginner Opti sailing in Spanish. I can tell you that the second week was much more challenging! A week or so later I got asked by the same club to do a classroom style 2 hour presentation on “advanced sailing in English for adult members of the club. The “Sailing in English” fever was starting to spread.
Some of the adults that came to my class had children in the club’s program. So, after my class, I can honestly say it just occurred to me, why not bring these young sailors to the English language instead of bringing them a native speaker. My idea was to create an opportunity for these racers to come to the U.S. so they could train with a local team and live with a host family and get a true cultural experience while doing what they love! To my surprise, the parents thought it was a brilliant idea and I was beginning to think so too.
That’s when I contacted Joel Labuzetta, the junior program director at Annapolis Yacht Club and proposed the idea. He was on board right away and even offered boats for the Spanish sailors during their stay. I gathered all the information, prices, regatta schedule, host family logistics etc and prepared an official information packet to distribute (with the help of my new sailing connections) to Spanish families and Clubs around Cataluña.
Fast forward to this past summer, I finally returned home and just days later so did five Catalan sailors. One sailor came for the full month of July and participated in the Opti Nationals. The other four came for about two and a half weeks. To my relief all went well. In fact, the AYC families enjoyed the experience hosting as much as the sailors did. As Tomás Ruiz de Luque, the AYC Opti Head Coach and exchange coordinator puts it, this program bridges culture through the love for sailing. Now referred to as the “Sailing Exchange Program” Tomás and I along with Magda Resano, the coordinator in Spain, are working to put together this summer’s exchange program. As the title suggests, this summer the Americans will have the opportunity to travel to Barcelona and the second half of the summer the Catalans will have the opportunity to return to Annapolis. You can check out the website to learn more www.youthsailingexchange.com or visit us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/sailingexchange.
In addition to my experiences starting this exchange program, I got out on the water myself by joining a local team who raced on a Beneteau First 40.7 on Sundays. I enjoyed the slow paced Sundays where we would arrive at the club at a decent hour of 10:30 (remember, people stay out late on weekends!), have a breakfast of authentic tortilla (Spanish omelet made of potato, onion and egg), and head out on the water to do one one-hour race. Granted the racing was competitive for that hour, it was the experience as a whole that I loved because I was learning about the culture through sailing. This group became like family to me. I’ll never forget the time we sailed from Barcelona to Menorca (an island off of Spain) in an overnight race. The regatta overlapped with a major Spanish holiday called Sant Joan, which among other celebratory efforts involves horses running through small streets so crowded with people that someone always gets their foot stepped on. With out my sailing team, I would never have experienced this tradition at the epicenter of where it is celebrated in Spain.
From my own experiences abroad as well as my efforts to create a program for others to have the abroad experience, I’ve learned that there is no better way to learn about a different culture and place than by sharing something in common, in this case, sailing. Although I didn’t really start my professional career in Spain as there often is pressure to do after college, I have grown as a person and want to make it possible for others to have an experience similar to mine. So my biggest advice to the soon to be graduate is pursue your sailing and personal ambitions in whatever direction that might be. Now is the time to try it and you never know what path you’ll find yourself on.
