Long Overdue Posting

This is an entry that I wrote shortly after the Olympic Trials in March, I just didn't have the gusto to post it at the time, so here it is! (see the follow up at the end)

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And the Dream is… Over.
For now anyways

I would really have liked to title this posting “I’m going to the Games!!!” Unfortunately that is not the case. For those of you who have been following the progress, you will already know that I did not win the Olympic Trials for Canada. I came second and will not be going to China in August for the main event.

The World Championships in Takapuna were really something else. By something else I mean the event was not in any kinds of conditions that were ‘normal’ for the area or what the rest of the world really expected. It was even different from the conditions that I was training in at the venue pre-worlds. “Auckland is a windy place!! Should be really good!” said some people. “March is a variable time of year, but it should still be great sailing there,” said others. The first forecast we got leading up to the event was calling for more than 15 knots for the entirety of the regatta, then it changed that only the first two days were going to be windy. Then the first day of the regatta was no racing due to a lack of wind. Day two brought 15 knots, followed by 3-10knots for the following days. Now, the wind strength is one thing. Did I mention that the direction of the wind was changing constantly? Oh yes, and the current. The tides were ripping in and out every day and made for even more interesting racing.

It may sound like I’m complaining, but I am certainly not. The event was extremely well run and though we were waiting around a lot, the organizers did a fantastic job of getting fair races in. Except for the fact that I lost my trials, I thought it was a pretty decent event. There were things that I would do a little differently, but I think all in all I gave it a pretty solid effort. I was quite happy with how consistently I sailed in the extremely variable conditions. Looking at the results, you can see that even the very best of sailors had some shocking finishes near the back.

My one main problem was getting off the starting line. For some reason (and after weeks of reflection I still can’t quite understand) I just could not get myself punched out on the starting line. What I was good at through the event was just plugging away at the fleet. I felt like I had pretty good downwind speed and I also was able to make gains in almost all of the races on the final beat to the finish line. I don’t think that anyone really had the place figured out, so it was just a matter of minimizing mistakes and choosing one side of the course. The wind would come down in alternating lines down the sides of the course, so it was easy to want to cross the course. That would be deadly because by the time you would get to the side where you thought the wind was, it would be on the other side again. It was a bit of a gamble coming into the windward mark, but it was so important to stick to your guns and be patient.

I would like to thank so many people for their support during my Campaign. Firstly I owe my family so much. They have been there for me during the highs and the lows. Without them as a constant in my life, who knows if I would have been able to make it to where I am now. James, my boyfriend has been an important addition to my life and my sailing over the past year and I owe him for just being there on the other end of the phone after sailing everyday… that’s a lot of days and a lot of listening!!

Also I would like to thank all the people who have been following my blog, or been watching the results and thinking of me. It makes me want to share the excitement of the racing and it helps me push through the lows. So thank you for all the e-mails and comments on my blog.

Thanks to Tine Moberg-Parker, my coach. Royal Vancouver Yacht Club for the support through the Corinthian Fund. The Canadian Yachting Association, Sport Canada, BC Sailing and the Phelan Foundation have all been a part of making this possible for me. Without all of these people and organizations an Olympic Campaign would be next to impossible.

Also, I would like to congratulate Lisa Ross who will be representing Canada at the Olympic Games in the Laser Radial. Go get ‘em!

For me this is hardly the end. This is the beginning of some new things for me, but I still intend to do another Campaign for 2012. Sailing is what I love to do. There is always something new to learn.

That’s all for now folks!

Thanks again for all your support!
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Reading that posting again is hard, but I'm now at a place where I feel I can move on. My apologies to those of you who had been checking my blog regularly, I doubt anyone reads this anymore... but here we go!

After the trials I told myself that I would see my season through, after all it is what I love to do. This was a huge mistake. I went to France and to Holland for the same regattas that I've been doing for the past seven years, but this year things were incredibly different. I had lost my sense of purpose and all confidence was gone. To be honest, I don't know that I've ever been through such an emotional roller coaster, but I have come off the roller coaster and I've managed to steady my wobbly legs from the ride.

And now a quick look at what is in store for me now!

I'm going to start University at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. It's going to be a good change for me since I think by the time these trials came around I was pretty burnt, but I was not letting myself see that. So back to school for me! There is a sailing team there and I fully intend on sailing continuously while I'm studying, I will not travel nearly as much though. James and I will be sailing a 505, I will have my Europe Dinghy and a Laser to play around on... what can I say, I love to be out on the water!

Epic Pre-Worlds update!! (epic as in long!)

Since I last wrote, I have done a lot of things! It started out with some training at home in Vancouver until December, at which time I got to head down to Australia for the month! What a nice change to go from winter directly to the middle of summer. It really gets the sailing juices flowing again that's for sure. I did two events there. Sydney International Regatta and the Australian Laser Nationals It was really great to go down under and get some good quality racing in during the winter months.

Sydney Harbour is like no other place I've ever been to sail. There is a continuous flow of boat traffic in the harbor, be it ferries, dinghies, jet boats or nice $$ Yachts! Sydney International Regatta was a good wake up call for me and I ended up 13th overall. It was good training in a good quality fleet in a tricky venue. I couldn’t have asked for much more than that! Besides, it was much better this year since I managed not to write off the laser I was using like I did last year! (RIP Bunghole)

After SIRS, I spent some time in Sydney with my good friends Mike Leigh and Kat Wade. I had Christmas with them for the second year running, which was really nice! Just after Christmas I headed over to Melbourne for the Australian Nationals that were held in Blairgowrie.
Blairgowrie is just south of Melbourne and is officially the furthest south in the world I’ve ever been! The sailing there was also very good. It was quite a windy venue and we were racing in a mixed fleet there. It made for some really great competition. I ended up 24th overall there, which is not a great result, but I was happy to have been able to work on some things that were weak from SIRS. It was strange to me to be racing over New Years, but thankfully New Years day was a rest day!

I had been contemplating sticking around down under for Sail Melbourne, but I decided that it would be a good idea to go home for a bit and do Miami OCR instead. SO… I went home to Vancouver and went skiing for a couple days at Whistler Mountain with my boyfriend! It was a dramatic change of scenery and temperature, but it was certainly worth it!! What a beautiful place to ski and with the best company I could ask for!

Miami OCR was bizarre this year. There were only a handful of boat classes due to clashing schedules with world championships being down under. The Laser Radial fleet however, was strong as ever with the event counting towards Olympic Selection for several nations. After having raced in Australia for a month in windy conditions and training in stormy weather in Miami, the regatta itself was quite different! We never saw a race in more than 8 knots (maybe 10 knots in some gusts). This was one of my first events as of late where I did well in light winds. It was very satisfying and a great confidence boost for me to know that my training has been working. Over the winter I was trying to lose some weight so that I would be able to do well in a variety of conditions as opposed to just in the strong winds. Not only that, but after the racing in Australia I was in a much better head space for racing again. I took the event solely as a training event and tried new things in races, put myself in difficult positions and managed to pull through. I ended up 12th overall. This was to be my last event before my Olympic Trials!

I am now in Takapuna, Auckland, New Zealand preparing for “the main event” here. The Laser Radial World Championships and Canadian Olympic Trials. So far I’ve done only 4 days of sailing, but it’s been in quite a variety of conditions! Strong winds, light winds, choppy water, flat water, shifty, different current. This venue is proving to be quite interesting and it should make for some good racing once the event gets underway two weeks from now! I’m starting to train with my coach, Tine Moberg-Parker as of tomorrow. Up until now I’ve been training with Debbie Hanna from Ireland as well as with the British Team a little bit. With my coach turning up now, my training should become a bit more structured and I’m certainly looking forward to that! This place is really beautiful with stunning views of the city and Rangitoto Island, which is actually an inactive volcano! (see the photo below… the view from the beach where we launch looking out over the bay... taken during the Tornado Worlds) I’m so excited! I think this will be a really great event… though as much as I’m looking forward to it starting, I’ll also be very happy to have it over with :o)



So this is it!! The first of two events I’ve been working towards for all these years! I do hope that all of you will follow the regatta. The website is www.takapunaworlds2008.com

My plan is to do one more quick update just before the event and then I will try to write a few things during the regatta! No, they won’t be as long as this one!!
Thank you all for tuning in!

End of the sailing season for now...

Since the World Championships in Portugal, I've had some time off which was needed! Time off was a great way to unwind and get re-focused on the work ahead that I need to do in order to ensure that I am the one going to the Olympics for Canada. Since my last post I've done two more competitions, both of which were in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

The first regatta was CORK at the end of August, which was a very different kind of racing compared to the worlds. I was finding it very difficult with such a large fleet, with people of all different skill levels, to get off the line at the start. Apparently I wasn't the only one since there were several general recalls and false starts through the whole week. The sailing there was quite light and shifty, but it paid off on most of the days to just be patient with the shifts and wait for the right time to get into the new wind. I ended CORK in 8th place overall out of 166 boats. I felt like this result was fairly good, but I felt like I wasn't sailing very well most of the time. It was a bit frustrating, but I did work on my starts and I was able to get a few good ones in there, which is always nice!

Just last weekend I was in Kingston again for the Kingston Fall Regatta/Great Lake Championships, which was also our NQR (National Qualifying Regatta). This event was well attended this year and I found the sailing this time around much better than it was at CORK. The winds were a bit more steady, the weather was beautiful, the Race Committee did a good job and the fleet was very competitive. As usual it was still tricky racing and I thought I did a better job this time around of playing the shifts and getting in the pressure. Still I was struggling for some reason to get off the starting line, which is clearly something I need to work on this winter. I think it is just that I have been sheeting in a second too late on most of the starts. There were several races in this regatta that I was able to climb the fleet and finish in the top 5 or 10. Coming into the last day of racing, I was in 4th, Jen Spalding was in 3rd and Danielle Dube was in 2nd. We were all only a couple of points away from each other. Since I was furthest behind, I had nothing to lose so I just sailed fast and had a fun race and finished 1st. When I looked around me, I saw that the people who were in front of me were several boats behind me... that meant that second place was certainly up for grabs! I saw this as an opportunity to try and sail with a different strategy. In the past, sailing with points in my head just messed things up for me. I saw this as a time to try and place myself in a winning position based on points. Do I sail one of the girls to the back of the fleet? Do I cover as much as I can, or do I just sail fast and attempt to win the race. I figured out with the scores that I had already that I would win a tie breaker against both of the girls who I was close to in points. (this is decided by the number of firsts each sailor has in the regatta, then the number of seconds). I decided to start near both of them and just try and be in front at the end. It ended up being a funny race because all three of us were alwasy changing position amongst ourselves. In the end though, Jen sailed a very good downwind and put a few boats between us. I knew that I could let there be about 3 boats between us for a tie, and as long as I had Danielle behind me I was okay. I finished 5th in that race with Danielle two boats behind me. I ended up second overall, tied on points with Jen and only one point in front of Danielle! It sure was exciting!! I'm not sure I could sail like that every race, but it was good practice!

So now I'm back in Vancouver again. Just getting back to the grind stone here. I have five months until the Olympic Trials, so its just work work work until then. I won't be doing any major regattas until I head down to Australia in December for a month. In the meantime I will keep you posted on how things are going with my training! Its been getting really cold here in Vancouver lately and I don't think that I'm ready for winter! I'm going to try and get some photos of my training here in Vancouver to post here sometime before the end of this month.

Worlds done, Canada is IN!

This year's World Championship was my best Worlds ever!! I managed to finish up the regatta on a good note to finish 18th overall and 14th Nation, which means that Canada will be going to the Olympics in the Laser Radial Class in 2008!

Each day there was quite a bit of wind, and each day we were on a different course area. That meant that every day was never the same as the day before, which really made it quite interesting for everyone. After the first two days, when I managed to have a bad first race and a good second race, it was decided by my coach that I should go out a bit earlier and sail a 'mock race' to sort out the kinks so that I could sail a good first race of the day. Evidentally it worked for day 3! In fact, in the race that I finished 4th, I rounded the top mark in first... and here's proof!!


(photo courtesy of PTVela2007/JFF)

The Laser Radial class was the only fleet to sail on all of the five race areas set up for the event. On day 4, after a shocking morning where I managed to crack my head open... we sailed on course area 3. This was probably the craziest racing I've ever done. The winds there were SO shifty, with the wind ranging from 5 to 25 knots and with current cutting accross the course early on. The first race wasn't too bad, but the second one was completely crazy! (Race number 8) There were a few of us working up the race course in the middle to right hand side and though we weren't in the most breeze, we still looked okay... that is until the wind stopped completely on our side of the course. We literally stopped in our tracks and got to watch the entire fleet plane into the top mark! I don't think I'll ever forget day 4 of this years worlds!

Day 4:


Day 5:


Day 5 was going to see us back out on course area 5, but with the winds blowing upwards of 28knots and some major gusts measuring in at around 40knots there was no way anybody was going to race... unfortunately the race committee decided to wait until 6pm to actually call off the racing that day. I was actually quite nervous going into day 5 because it had finally hit me that I was doing pretty well. I was in 21st going into day 5 and for some reason I suddenly started to think about the results instead of just taking it one race at a time as I had been. It turns out it was probably for the better for me because with only one race left on day 6, I was just excited to go sailing and have fun. It took me the entire evening to get my head back on straight and realize that no matter what, I was happy with how I sailed this Championship and there was no reason to be nervous! Going into the final day of racing I was quite excited to race as the conditions looked a bit lighter and we were on the course that was the furthest away from shore, which meant that the winds wouldn't be as shifty as on the other courses, which is always nice. I didn't have my coach for the last day because she had a flight to catch, but I did my best to think of what she would say to me before the race and followed our usual plan to sail a practice race before the start. I'm happy I did that, but even still the conditions changed before the start and the breeze picked up. I sailed a good race and ended up 6th, which managed to bump me back into the top 20 and even moved me up in the rankings against the other nations. I was 17th nation and ended up 14th nation.


SO, what did I learn this event? I learnt that I actually CAN do it! I really had a terrible season early on and I was actually quite down on myself coming to the worlds. I didn't actually feel I was at a world championship when I got to Cascais, which was probably for the best. I simply sailed, and tried to learn something from each race, which I did! I really have to thank Tine Moberg-Parker and Katherine Wade for their support on the water. The coaching was fantastic! Thanks guys!

What's next?
I'm heading to Ireland for a few days before going home. My next event will be CORK Sail Kingston at the end of August. Other than that I'll just be in Vancouver for the next few months preparing for next years Worlds in Auckland. That's the big one as the top Canadian there will go to the Games.


(photo courtesy of PTVela2007/JFF)

Gearing up for the Worlds

With the ISAF World Sailing Championships kicking off in a couple of days, everyone is getting the final preparations done on their boats. Coaches are arriving with coach boats, sailors are getting their boats measured and event organizers are seen more and more around the venue. There are tons of sailors here, approximately 1300 or so, and everyone had been assigned a space in the Marina here in Cascais. Its really quite impressive to see how so many sailors fit into this one space! It is only in the year before the Olympics that they host such a big event with all of the Olympic Classes in one venue at the same time.

The last few days I've been training and its been absolutely beautiful here. Nice strong breeze, fun waves and beautiful sunshine! I've been training a bit with Corinne, my Swiss training partner which has been good as ususal! She is really quite quick in these conditions so its been good to try and pace with her upwind in the strong breeze. Racing for the Lasers and Radials starts on the 4th of July and its going to be different this year! At this world Championship we are going to be changing race course areas each day, which will keep things interesting for everyone. Its been a bit of a challenge to sort out where exactly each race area will be, but we've been making educated guesses and its been incredible to see the difference in conditions between each course. The winds here may be strong, but they are certainly not steady. The wind is constantly up and down in velocity, very shifty and very difficult to predict. Not only this, but the wave patterns and current are completely different on each area as well. Each day is going to prove to be very different!

Today my coach will arrive and it will be nice to catch up with her and sort myself out for the event. I'm not planning on sailing for the next couple days so that I will be all rested up for the event. Today I came down nice and early to get all my stickers on my boat and to get measured in. Next thing on the agenda is to watch the Americas Cup Race at the local sailors spot! Everyday there is a Cup Race on, the local cafe's have their TVs set up to accomodate all the sailors here. Each day at 2pm the world comes to a halt for everyone to watch the Americas Cup! Today will be a big day for it as the Cup could potentially go to Alinghi if they win today!

Just F.Y.I.:

In terms of Olypmic Qualification, this years Championship will qualify 75% of the Olympic berths for the Games. It is then up to each country's Federation to decide what their Olympic Qualifier will be to decide who goes. For Canada, we need to qualify the country for a berth at the Games in 2008. IF, however, one of us finishes in the top 8 here and there is no other Canadian in the top 10, that person will automatically qualify for the Olympics. If this does not happen and we do qualify the country, then next year's worlds will be our Olympic Qualification... ie: first Canadian at the Worlds in 2008 goes to the Olympics.


SO... Wish me luck!!

I'll update you all through the event!

Please follow the results and other event news here: http://www.cascaisworlds2007.com/

I was in hiding!

Its been a while since my last post.

Since the last post I was in the following places: Russia, Portugal, Holland, Home and now back to Portugal.

My trip to Russia was completely non-sailing related and was a fantastic break from the whole sailing scene. I got to see my brother, who is living out there for work. My sister also took some time off to make the trip out at the same time, so we had a great trip with the three of us for our first time ever. I got to see Moscow, St. Petersberg and Novgorad. Its a very neat place, with a lot of history!

This is a picture of the Hermitage in St Petersberg:


This is my Brother, Evgenia (his girlfriend), my Sister and I on a boat tour


After Russia I went directly to Cascais, Portugal. The venue for this years world Championships. I was there for 5 days of training, just to check things out and get an idea of that the place is like. It was certainly worth it as I feel a lot more relaxed now that I've returned. I was training in May with Nufar from Israel and Sara from Portugal as well as a couple of days with the British Team! It was good hard training with lots of wind for most of the days.


Photos courtesy of James Lucas

Holland was my last event that I did. This regatta, which is now called the Breitling Regatta (formerly SPA, formerly Holland Regatta) was yet another light wind event. That makes every regatta so-far this year to be light winds. It was very difficult for me, and I was getting extremely frustrated with my sailing. It did not help that I completely missed the first race of the regatta because I decided to tune up before the race and couldn't make it downwind in time for the sart due to a lack of wind. The rest of the regatta was a bit off after that. I don't even know where I finished there, but I had a couple decent races in the silver fleet... though I did not feel too good about being in silver fleet. The good news from that regatta is that Mike Leigh finished 3rd there, so that was really exciting!

Going home after Holland was such a nice feeling! It was so good to be back in Vancouver for a couple weeks... unwind a little and unpack. I was back in Vancouver for just over two weeks. I didn't do much sailing in that time, but I did hit the gym quite hard and got back on track with my fitness training which had slipped while I was travelling around everywhere.

This is a photo of me on my way up the Grouse Grind. I look happy, but my legs are burning and I'm dripping sweat! It was really fun, though I'm going to have to work on it so I can get under an hour! (for those of you who don't know, the grouse grind is a famous climb practically straight up a mountain in Vancouver. Its really beautiful!)


photos courtesy of James Lucas

Right now I'm back in Cascais in preparation for the world championships which start on the 4th of july. I will write another post tomorrow! Its late tonight, and I need my beauty sleep... or just sleep at any rate. Its supposed to be windy again tomorrow!

photos, France