S.O.F.

This year's Semaine Olympique Francais was the most interesting one I've done so-far. This was my 5th or 6th time doing this event, and I've never seen so little wind in Hyeres. With the wind ranging from 0-7 knots for the first 4 days of racing and shifting at least 30-40 degrees all the time, it made for some tricky situations. Everyone had a shocking race at some point or another. I unfortunately had the opposite, with only one or two good races and the rest were shocking! It really was good practice for light wind racing and the racing was actually quite close most of the time. I was struggling, not so much with the light winds, but with the placement of myself against the fleet in these shifty conditions. You never really knew when the next shift would happen, or where the wind would die off first.

At any rate, I had some fun sailing in the breeze, even though I was in the silver fleet. In one of the races though I had the fun of having my outhaul come undone!! What a pain in the butt that is in 18knots to try and re-tie it! So I finished the race 3rd last. I had to have a sense of humor about it otherwise I would have been really upset. It was frustrating, but it wasn't the end of the world. The next race I came through and was going really well in 4th, and just on the last run before the reach to the finish, I capsized... lost about 4 boats and finished 8th. At least we got to stretch our legs on the last day of racing and get some hiking in for once!

Right now I'm in the Pyrenees Mountains with my good friends Mike and Kat. Its beautiful here and we've done some hiking and managed to make a day trip to Andorra. Its been really nice to get away from the stress of the last event and to unwind with the beautiful backdrop of the Pyrenees. We're leaving the area today, heading to Nice so that I can catch a flight to Russia to see my Brother! From Russia I will go to Cascais (where the worlds will be) for a solid 6 day training camp that I'm really looking forward to. It will be nice to see the venue and get an idea of what's to come. There will be lots of people to train with, so that will be really great.

I'll post some photos when I have a better internet connection!

Ciao!

Pre S.O.F.

I'm just getting ready right now for the Semaine Olympique Francais. So far things have been going pretty well. I've been training with Corinne Meyer and Nathalie Brugger from Switzerland and its been really great to train with them!



This years event is going to be huge! There are over 200 laser standards registered and over 100 laser radials. I have no idea where they are going to put all those boats!! That's just two boat classes... there are heaps of other boats here too. This week they have also been trying out the new women's high performance skiff boats here. Its been really neat to be able to take a look at what might be available to sail in the next quadrennial. I haven't been able to try any of them myself unfortunately, but maybe in the next day or two I might be allowed to!

Last weekend Corinne and I took a break from our training to make a day trip with Kat and some of her friends. I had the honours of being the driver through all the tiny, sketchy mountain roads. We ended up at what is known as the "Grand Canyon of Europe". A Massive Gorge with the most amazing looking water and beautiful cliffs all around. It was certainly worth the drive to see it!



Racing starts this Sunday the 22nd! Check out the link to the right for regatta results and news.

Princess Sophia Regatta, done and done!

Well, the regatta is over. I ended up finishing on a good note, after a very sour note! On the first day of finals (Which ended up being our last day of racing) I finished with a first and a second. First from the back of the fleet in the first race, then second from the front in the second race! I figured it would be good to just see what it felt like to be on both ends of the spectrum! I qualified very last in the Gold Fleet and managed to climb 8 positions to finish 38th overall. I am happy that this regatta is over and that I had those experiences. It really is amazing how bad you can feel when you're last, and how exciting it can be at the front of the fleet. I prefer the front!

I've just arrived today in Hyeres, France with Mike Leigh and Kat Wade. We had a nice drive over from Palma. Now I'm going to start training here to prepare for the Semaine Olympique Francaise which starts on the 22nd. I'll post again before then!

Princess Sophia Regatta, the halfway point

This update is coming along halfway through one of the most incredible regattas I’ve done in a long time, and that’s not in a good way! So-far in this regatta (3 days) we’ve managed to get in 4 races. Let me tell you what that was like. On the 1st day, there wasn’t too much wind and it was shifty. We waited around for a long time and then got one race in. This wasn’t too bad because we started at 2. The second day, there wasn’t much wind and it was shifty. We waited around for a really long time and then got one race in; A bit ridiculous. Today…. Well, today there was a whole new level of “wow”. We launched at 11 for a 12:00 start. The wind was shifty again, but there was wind today. Maybe 30 degree shifts for the most part I’d say. I was in the Blue Fleet for the Radials and we didn’t even get our first start sequence until 5:30pm. There are words to describe how I was feeling (along with the rest of the radials) but they would not be appropriate for this blog! Somehow the race committee finally managed to get the swing of things after 5 hours and squeezed 2 races in at the end of the day. I got to shore no less than eight hours after I launched. WOW.

As for my racing so-far… besides feeling as though I was comatose in the very first race of the regatta, things are going okay. I am not really too happy with how I’m playing my shifts upwind, I think I have to keep my head out of the boat more, but my reaching speed has been good as well as my downwind, (except for the first race of course). It has been really shifty and the velocity of the wind has been up and down just as much. To stay in the breeze and on the lifted tack is the key to success, the problem I’ve been having has been deciding where to place myself and when to ‘dig’ into certain shifts. The other difficult thing has been the starts. The race committee is letting so many of the starts go, but occasionally they’ll catch some boats for starting early. Therefore the fleets are all pushing the line pretty hard, making for some extra long days. It doesn’t help though when the line is disgustingly biased.

Not everyone had a terribly frustrating day today though as my buddy Mike Leigh managed to jump about 40 positions to land in 20th after today. Not too shabby I’d say! Go Mike!

This is only the halfway point. I do believe that I have JUST qualifed for the Gold fleet which means that I can only go up from here. There are two more days of racing before the medal races. With any luck, the race committee will have learned how things work by now and we will be able to have some good old fashioned fun out there! Keep watching the regatta website for news and results! http://www.trofeoprincesasofia.org/

Looking back

I just wanted to post a link to my other Blog. I've manage to scrounge up a few old e-mails from the last 2-3 years for those of you who are interested! Please take a look!
http://keamiaoldupdates.blogspot.com

Thanks a bunch.

Just FYI, I am leaving to go to Palma de Mallorca tomorrow for the Princess Sofia Regatta! Expect an update from me while I'm there!

Cabarete Training Camp 2007

Cabarete, Domininican Republic is well known as a windsurfer's paradise. Well, its not only windsurfers who love the strong breeze and warm weather that place has to offer! This was my third time to the Dominican Republic, my second time to Cabarete and each time I never want to leave!

This year's Canadian Sailing Team Training Camp was 10 days long and though the weather didn't cooperate like it did last year, it was still a good solid training camp. In the Laser Radial Class we had Lisa Ross, Danielle Dube, Tory Crowder and myself all from Canada with Anna Tunnicliffe of the USA joining us for the first half of the camp. With Coaches Mark Lammens and 'local' coach Rulo we had some really great training in all kinds of conditions. The winds ranged from 5knots to 18knots sometimes with current, always with waves! Though the idea of this camp was to have a big wind/big wave camp in preparation for the worlds, the circumstances were probably better than expected because it really did go to show that you have to expect the un-expected, no matter where you are.

During this camp I worked on my body position in the boat, my hiking fitness (when there was enough wind) and just my overall technique in the challenging wavy conditions. It was really apparent that whoever was able to keep the boat powered up through the waves was going to come out ahead. I really don't think any of us were a lot faster than each other... it had more to do with the technique of powering through the waves. The best part of the training was being able to get lots of video of ourselves sailing. Sometimes things can feel funny in the boat and you can't quite put a finger on it until you have an external eye. The video debriefs really helped me to understand where I can improve on my sailing and also to show me where some of my strengths are that I wasn't aware of.

The other great thing about training in a place like Cabarete is that it is an outdoor playground! Some of the mornings we would all jump on 'moto conchos' (motor bike taxis) and head over to the local surf beach to catch some waves before we had to go sailing. I am by no means a good surfer, but it was still fun and challenging and a great workout... if you can handle getting pummled by waves! On our day off, I did both surfing and some windsurfing! I am still a beginner with the windsurfing as well, but I am quickly getting better which is really exciting.

It was nice to have some other things to try while training to keep active and make the whole training atmosphere a lot more fun.

On the last day of the training camp we were supposed to have a mini regatta. The Cabarete Classic 2007 had to be cancelled due to a serious lack of wind!! It was really unfortunate, but we still managed to make something of the day with a small game of beach volleyball and then much later in the day I went surfing with some of the locals. It was a fun way to finish 10 days of hard training!

I would like to thank all the staff at the Carib Wind Center for all their help and hard work in making this camp take place. Also thanks to Tommy Wharton and Mark Lammens for a job well done. And of course Rulo, the video camera guru... thanks so much for all your work with the camera and your excellent feedback in the debriefs.

Getting up to Speed in 2007

This is my first ever blog posting. I thought it would be appropriate to get everyone up to speed quickly! (for those of you who know me well, you will know that quickly does not really exist with me!)

I am campaigning for the 2008 Olympics (to take place in Beijing) in the Laser Radial Women's Single Handed Dinghy. I am sailing for Canada and I have been sailing full time now for about 2 years. It is fantastic, with lots of ups and downs, and a steady learning curve.

Here's how it works:
There is only one Olympic berth for these upcoming games in this discipline and I am up against several determined and hard working Canadian girls.
Our Olympic Trials will take place at the 2008 World Championships to be held in Auckland New Zealand in March 2008.
The first step involved is to qualify the country for the space at the Olympics. This will (hopefully) happen at this years ISAF World Championships in Cascais, Portugal in July.


It would take much too long to get everyone up to speed on the whole last two years, so since it is early in 2007 I thought it would be easy to start from January until now (March)

This year started, as usual, with a trip down to Florida. The main event was the Rolex Miami Olympic Classes Regatta which took place at the end of the month. The event was well attended and very challenging. I was sailing really well for the first two days sitting around 19th/20th. The third day turned out to be a crucial day in qualifying for Gold Fleet, and I managed to botch up everything by having two bad races. I missed the Gold Fleet by only a couple points and I was sitting in first place in the Silver Fleet for the finals. Disappointed, but not destroyed, I aimed to win the silver fleet. It was also my goal, though more for egotistical reasons than anything else, to lap some of the sailors in the gold fleet. Cheeky yes, but not impossible, especially since the wind got much stronger for the last two days of racing. I ended up laping some of the small sailors in the Gold Fleet in the first race of the finals! Yay! I sailed strong and finished the regatta in 1st place in Silver Fleet. So not all was lost. It is very frustrating to be in that position, but I did feel happy with how I sailed. I worked really hard on keeping my mind clear and just doing what I know how to do.

The next event was the Women's Single Handed North American Championships in Fort Lauderdale. This event was also fairly well attended with several of the international girls sticking around. This event proved to be quite interesting with the winds not cooperating much with the sailors! There was always wind for the event, but where it was coming from was anybody's guess! It was all over the place, and the race committee was really having a tough time getting some races finished because of this. With some frustrating situations, and winds that were really challenging I ended up 18th out of 41. Nothing too spectacular. It would have been exponentially more difficult an event if the Lewis Family had not opened their home to me and three other girls during the event... Superbowl weekend sure made it difficult to find hotels there!



The final Event of the January tour was the Laser Midwinters East Regatta in Clearwater Florida at the end of February. My Swiss training partner Corinne Meyer stayed along to train with me between the Ft. Lauderdale event and this one. We had three solid weeks of training leading up to the event with weather ranging from hot and sunny with light winds, to cold and stormy and windy. Our routine consisted of getting up, going to the gym for at least two hours, lunch, then sailing for at least another 2-3 hours. It worked quite well!

Laser Midwinters East was a huge event. This year was the first time ever that they had to split the fleets there. Both the Laser Standard Fleet and the Laser Radial Fleet were broken into Gold and Silver groups. I started out the event all right, standing around 18th after the first day. This event was the first time I have ever steadily climbed the results board. Each day I sailed a little better, and always was very consistent in my results even though the conditions changed dramatically. At the end of the event I finished 5th overall right behind my team mate Lisa Ross. I am very pleased with this result and I hope to keep up the consistency of my results in the upcoming events!



So that was the first round of competitions for this season! Stay tuned for more regatta updates.