May Update!

Hi everyone,

This is our May Newsletter. It is an update on the work and events that B and I have done this year, and an update on what we are doing next including our events in Europe. We thought we would like to update everyone that follows us, and we want to share our journey – all the ups and downs – with honesty and reflection as we work towards 2024.

Currently

We have a lot to achieve in terms of planning and training before we head to Europe Mid-June. It is fair to say it is an exciting but very busy time for B and I. We are trying to balance training with our coaching/managing work, as well as our university papers. No one ever said it was easy to Olympic Campaign on a budget, work, and study, but here we are giving it a go – something we are both proud of that we did not stop when it got hard.

Last weekend we competed at the NZL 470 Nationals. It was a lot of fun! We made the decision on Wednesday and then picked up a boat on Thursday evening at 8:00pm to compete on Friday… We both wanted to jump back into the boat for a bit of fun and achieve more racing practice before we went overseas. To be honest, we made some average decisions on the racecourse, and we kept sailing to the 49er lay lines not the 470 lay lines… whoops! But, we had so much fun getting back into our old class and thinking technically about set-up. Full credit goes to the current crop of 470 sailors who are racing well and Snowy (Paul Snow-Hansen) for the awesome coaching.

Recently

In the last few months, we have had the pleasure of sailing with the other teams in the FX Squad. Over February, March, and April we had plenty of high-quality training blocks and racing. We have been doing all the right things, looking at our speed, testing the new sails, getting fit, improving our boat handling etc and we thank all the sailors and coaches we have had around our us. It has paid to be open minded and to stay curious as everyone has different ideas and insights that can be valuable. One of our favorite parts had to be looking at the new black sails for the first time and trying to figure out how they work compared to the old style.

In February we sent our racing boat called ‘Thanks Mate’ to Europe. We packed her into the container (Thanks YNZ and Mearsk shipping) and off she went. If you get a bit confused on our boat name, we didn’t name her. We bought the boat of Pete and Blair who named the boat after a Lee Hart skit called the Worst Job Interview ever, but funnily enough both B and I got the joke! Thanx Mate!

In terms of racing, over the February to March racing block B and I really enjoyed getting amongst a relatively big FX fleet. At times we had 7-8 boats on the start line which was awesome to see. It was an impressive level of racing that we had off Torbay for four regattas and the quality of sailors that we had in the fleet really pushed us. Everyone from Medalists to Junior World Champs, there was no shortage of talent to punish you when you made a mistake. We learnt our lessons hard and fast, and by the end of the race block we felt like we were finding our groove and sharpening up. We took some races of the good girls, and we can be pretty happy with that.

In the last month, we have been doing a lot of training by ourselves and with the FX boys. We have technique details we are chipping away on, and we have wanted to get more hours on the water. We have also watched Jo/Molly and Alex/Liv have some good racing overseas which is exciting and promising. We have loved our training, we chipping away nicely and we look forward to our turn to test ourselves overseas.

Up next

We have three events in Europe that we are preparing for. These events will be our first International Events as a team since 2018 when we did the Enoshima World Cup in the 470 Class. We fly out for Kiel Week in Germany on June 16th which we expect will be a shake down event as we figure ourselves out. After that we have the Europeans in Aarhus in Denmark and finally, we have our peak event in Lake Como Italy – the 49er FX Junior Worlds. There is a cool squad going to the Junior Worlds this year, so we are looking forward to being apart of that and representing NZ on the World Stage.

B and C