USA 50 Racing Kieler Woche
From Facebook: June 21, 2022
It’s been such a whirlwind couple weeks we haven’t had time to get a post up, so here is a full recap!
After finishing a really special training camp in Newport we headed home for a few days… and then jumped right back on a plane to Germany for Kiel Week!
This was the fastest turnaround from training camp to international event that we’ve had since starting up this campaign. It was a great test of all our training and load management leading up to this point. Even with some setbacks (we had a total of 6 lost bags, including our foils, in three different cities, on two different airlines) we got the boat and our bodies and minds tuned up and ready. Thanks to Steph and Maggie for lending us a compass to use for racing this week as ours was in one of those bags!
So cool to be going into our second international regatta of the quad together. We’ve navigated the growth of our team in a way that we can be proud of. Slow, steady, always trying to be kinder to each other. We’re ramping up. We are old enough now to know that peak performance comes from patience and trust. The process is a long thing.
It’s been a steep learning curve for me as I figure out how really give myself over to our Olympic campaign at the same time that I’m trying to give myself over to being the mama of a one year old. Both are challenging and epically rewarding. Sometimes it seems like I’m doing it wrong, or not enough, or not like other people, but then I remember that this “hard” feeling is really just a sign of growth… and I put my head back down and keep showing up.
Tonight in Kiel, Germany we are preparing for the iconic Kieler Woche to start. Racing begins for the Nacra tomorrow at 1300 our time. So far, we just have a whole lot of stoke! The boat is ready. We are ready! The forecast is totally unpredictable. But we’re up for the challenge! Stay tuned for more updates as we get under way.
Goodnight and go USA 50!
June 22, 2022 Kiel, Germany
No racing today at Kiel Week! The race committee felt that the little post frontal westerly we had all afternoon was not stable enough to race in. We waited on shore until 3:30 before the day was called off.
In the meantime, we got all our boxes moved over to the Nacra boat park area using Dave’s neat scooter!
This scooter is a definite necessity here. The regatta venue is HUGE and filled with lots of cool vendors and even a Ferris wheel.
Training and racing at Kiel Week has kind of a nomadic feel… from set up to breakdown there’s an immense amount of schlepping involved!
Trailer parking is almost a mile away from the venue and for a 50 euro deposit, you can drive your car or trailer into the actual regatta site to unload. We didn’t have a car with a tow hitch (someone delivered our boat here for us from Hyeres) and so we set up our platform in the trailer lot and wheeled it the 3/4 miles over to our spot. Took the boat for a nice little walk to warm her up for the event
Fun to be in a big city of a regatta venue and be surrounded by so many friends and sailors. Tomorrow is a new day. Looking forward to having some breeze to stretch our legs in!
June 23, 2022 · Kiel, Germany ·
Started the event off with a bang. Port tack start, led to the right + secured a win in the first race of the day. Okay, good stuff! We’ll take a 1st any day!
Second start… classic low after a high! Went for a starboard start near middle pin and bungled the acceleration. Quickly wound up second row. Doh! That really hurt. Hung on starboard + waited patiently for a nice lane to open up but it seemed like the Dutch boat above us liked the same spot. As we tacked they simo tacked with us… SLAM! Ouch. Immediately peeled off to the left but didn’t seem to have the pressure to foil. It was a painful race but we worked through it and went into race three ready for redemption.
Race 3: Another keeper of a port tack start. We raced well to the course right and approached the windward mark in the top 10 pack. Good speed downwind! Big improvement on that from Hyeres. Unfortunately, redemption had to wait because we poorly executed a “soak” into the right hand gate mark and wound up capsized on the mark. Crap. Very frustrating! Locked back in + tried to pass boats. Shake it off! One more race to do!
Race 4: Here we go! Good start on port, but couldn’t cross one small pack of boats without a massive duck so we made the choice to hitch back left. We got back onto port as soon as we could. Nice tack, good speed. We selected a nice lane to take to the course right. Once we started pacing, it became clear that the boat below didn’t want to foil. Yikes! We had foiling boats all around and one hold out below! We wound up in a bit of a sandwich between the boat below and a boat foiling over the top. In hindsight, might have been best to take the sterns of that starboard pack! We worked our race and came away with a decent score. Keeper.
This is the dang Wild West out here!! Holy cow.
Overall we saw many of the improvements we worked toward in our time away from the fleet. Some unforced errors on our part led to higher scores than we’d like. This is still a learning process and we’ll take our wins + head into tomorrow with smiles on our faces + some good ideas on how to squeeze a bit more speed out of the boat!
More breeze and racing tomorrow at 2pm our time!
June 24, 2022
Another gorgeous sailing day in Kiel. Less breeze on than we thought today, with conditions between 9-16kts and funky chop. On the closest course to shore, but our windward mark was butted up against the shipping channel. We got really close to a lot of tall ships!
Race 1 we worked our way up to 2nd for a little while, stellar upwind tactics and speed! Last downwind we blew it by jibing away early while the boats that dug into the bottom of the course left stayed in quite a bit more pressure and ultimately passed us. Happy to keep a 7th, but bummed that my tactics were not better!
R2: sailed in the top 7 for a lot of the race, happy with our comms on the course, but really struggling downwind. We would pass upwind and then get passed downwind! Lost a few boats on the last downwind for a keeper. Bummer on the downwind speed, we decided to stay focused on our comms and upwind speed, and make some small changes in technique.
Race 3: good upwind speed and comms! Wish foiling came more easily. We’ve learned a lot but have more tweaks to make to get where we want to be. Little better downwind but got light on us and we didn’t adapt well enough to prevent a couple passes. Last race of the day coming up and the breeze looks to be building a little…
Finally, race 4. We had a nice start on starboard, played into the left and led back thinking that the right angle and pressure that had been forecast might finally be arriving. We ran into a couple boats in displacement mode and had to duck ‘em. The left came in hard and we were pretty far behind the boats that we had been leading! Got to work making gains and chipped away to a 16th. Phew.
Overall a better day on all the points we had aimed to improve. Happy with so much. The downwinds are on our list for tomorrow!!!! Racing in the afternoon… stoked to see if we can close the gap to the top 10!
Photo of us trying to find a lane to the right by Andreas Kling
June 25, 2022
Unfortunately there was no racing today! We waited all day on land and the race committee called us off sometime after 4PM.
Within 4 points of 11th, and with a big gap to the boat behind, we would have loved another day of racing to try to move forward! That being said, we finish Kiel Week in 14th overall. Still on track. We were pretty pleased to see the improvements in speed and racing we had wanted to make… good practice event before Euros!
Now one more training day here in Kiel before we pack up and ship off to Aarhus for the European Championship.