What a year! While it is not the end of 2022 yet, the end of the Worlds marks the end of a very busy sailing season and lots of travel. We kicked off this year with events in Palma and Hyeres -- making tons of progress in the really competitive mixed 470 fleet. After a lot of lessons learnt, we were fortunate enough to train in the future Olympic waters in Marseille in May where we continued to make progress on our racing abilities -- finishing off 3rd in the final coaches regatta!
We returned home to train in Oyster Bay for the summer, where we were joined by new up and coming 470 teams. Really exciting to make progress on growing the fleet on our home waters. Next it was off to the Hague in the Netherlands (next year's combined Worlds venue) where we were tossed around by massive currents! We had a tough event but were not too concerned with results as we were mostly aiming to gather information about the venue in prep for next year's worlds.
Next up were the Europeans in Cesme, Turkey! We had some major delays with our container arrival which kept us from training as much as we would have liked before the event. Luckily the container arrived in time for racing, and we managed to pull off some of our best racing results to date finishing 13th overall, just a few points shy of cracking the top 10.
With this top finish in Turkey, we set our expectations even higher when it came to the upcoming World Championship in Sdot Yam, Israel. Container arrived on time and we had plenty of sailing time to prep before the Worlds began. The first two days of the event brought some crazy winds with a moving low pressure system, and we were unable to figure things out. Looking back I think we overcomplicated things, struggling to make sense of the wind shifts, often left with our heads spinning after completing the races. We had some really poor finishes in the first two days of the qualifying series and did not qualify for gold fleet, we were crushed. We knew we had what it took to be racing in gold fleet, but we did not perform to our abilities. The rest of the regatta was spent trying to simplify things as much as possible while racing in silver fleet, and we were able to make progress in the challenging wind conditions and have some good battles. We came back to finish 35th overall at the Worlds. Not the finish we wanted, but a lot of great lessons learned. We are proud of the progress we've been making, despite the results not showing it too well during this event.
Now we return home to the states where we're able to sit back and digest everything we've learned, reassess, and make a plan to come back even better this spring. Up next for us is a US Sailing Team camp in December where we will hopefully be joined by other US 470s! Excited to get back to work and keep hammering!
A huge thank you to the Windmark Sailing Foundation for all of the support this year and for allowing us to chase our dreams! It takes a village, and without the unwavering support of Windmark, we would not be where we are today. Thank you! A massive thanks to our super coach, Yevgeniy Burmatnov, for guiding us in this journey and teaching us the value of hard work and persistence.
Finally we would like to thank all of our family, friends, and fans who contribute to our campaign. We cannot do this alone. Currently we are fundraising to help contribute to our upcoming domestic winter schedule, which include the US Olympic Trials starting in Miami in January of 2023. If you would like to make a donation, please head to our donation page on our team website.
See you on the water.
Upcoming events:
- US Miami Open Series -- January 2023
- US Clearwater Open Series -- February 2023
- Princess Sofia Regatta in Palma -- April 3-8, 2023
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