Hello!
I have just
returned from the World Championships for the 49erFX in Marseille, France. It
was an amazing and eye opening event.
We arrived
in France three weeks before the event started, and spent that time setting up
our boat and training at the venue. The sailing venue was at Prado Plage, about
a 10 minute drive away from the city of Marseille. We had a small apartment
right across the street, which made commuting there every day into a 2 minute
walk (amazing!).
Once we got
our boat sorted and set up (three days of preparation), we were able to get out
on the water for some training with the rest of the Canadian Team and our two coaches
that came to the event: Mark Asquith (National Team Coach) and Rob Frost
(Ontario Sailing Association Coach).
There are
three general wind directions in Marseille: The sea breeze, the offshore breeze
and the mighty mistral. We got a good taste of the mistral breeze during
training. This direction can crank out winds of up to 40 knots, with massive
swells, topped off with some nice choppy waves. Looking back, we are simply
happy to say we survived some of those days…We took some pretty hard falls and
got knocked around quite a bit. Most days, the majority of the boats that made
it out had to come back in with theirs sails taken down (from all countries,
even some of the top men!).
Of course,
come event time, the wind decided to calm down and we spent a lot of time
waiting on shore for the afternoon sea breeze to fill in. From about 1pm
onwards, the wind would slowly build before beginning to shut off again around
6pm. During racing, the wind would
usually pick up somewhere between 5 to 8 knots, then begin to die until we
could not race anymore.
The first
three days of the event was the qualifying series. This consisted of 30 minutes
races, where we raced in two 26 boat fleets. In the three days, we only managed
to get 5 races off total. This means 4 races counted, while each boat got to
drop their worst race. We had a great qualifying series and managed to sail
consistently. Our races averaged around a 10th place, which placed
us in 19th overall and into the Gold Fleet for the rest of the event
(the top 20 boats). Our goal going into this event was to qualify for Gold
Fleet. We were extremely excited when this happened! We were very nervous
awaiting results after the last day of qualifiers, and when we got the news we
had made it into the top 20, we were so proud of our accomplishment!
For the rest
of the regatta, we only sailed against the top 20 boats in Gold Fleet. This
proved to be an amazing and challenging experience. Erin and I are a new team,
and we have been sailing the FX full time now for only 4 months. Although we
sailed and performed quite well, the regatta opened our eyes and pin pointed
our weakest areas. What we discovered
was that our starts proved to be our major downfall in the Gold Fleet. The FX
is a difficult boat to manoeuver and we struggled to keep our position on the
line when were under the pressure of the final minute before the gun. This made
working back through the fleet very challenging as these top sailors are hard
to catch! It’s always difficult to start a race off behind the pack! But that
is exactly what this type of event is best for, to expose your weaknesses and
discover your strengths. Although we struggled on the start line, we were
pleased to have found that we have excellent boat speed and fairly consistent
manoeuvers. Overall, we finished in 20th place out of a fleet of 53
boats, and we were second North American team.
Going into
our fall training, we now have a solid idea of what we need to work on to be
able to advance ourselves in the international fleet. More start line work,
more heavy wind experience and more training in the gym! Worlds was an amazing
event and we are looking forward to continuing our quest towards representing
Canada at the 2016 Olympics.
I want to
give a very special thanks to the Hudson Yacht Club, whose donation through the
Corinthian Fund helped me attend this event. It helped us tremendously!
Lauren
Laventure
