2026 Nacra 17 World Championships: Our Trial by Fire
Quiberon, France | May 2026
Hoel and I went into the 2026 Nacra 17 World Championships in Quiberon, France, with a goal of finishing in the top 20. We finished 25th, and while we would have loved to hit that goal, the context is pretty important: when we lined up for the first race of Worlds, we had spent fewer than 30 days in the boat together and had done zero formal training as a team.
Hoel hadn't even graduated from UCLA yet. We were essentially doing this by the seat of our pants—getting whatever days together we could, figuring out logistics, learning each other as teammates and trying to get our new campaign moving while he was still finishing school.
So naturally, we decided to start by throwing ourselves into the most competitive event of the year.
It was a bit of a trial by fire, but that was also the point.
Learning What It Takes to Be a Top Nacra 17 Team
We could have spent months training on our own before putting ourselves on a starting line like this, but there was something incredibly valuable about going straight to Worlds. We wanted to see where the fleet was, understand what the best Nacra 17 teams in the world were doing and get an honest look at the work ahead of us.
Worlds gave us exactly that.
When you're racing against the best teams in the world, there isn't much room to hide. We got to see where our speed was competitive, where we were losing, which parts of our boat handling needed attention and how the established teams were operating around the racecourse. More importantly, Hoel and I got to start figuring out how we operate together when everything is happening quickly and the pressure is on.
For a team that had spent less than a month together in the boat, that experience was incredibly valuable.
Building Our Partnership
Hoel and I came into this campaign from very different places. I went to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, while Hoel is at the beginning of his Olympic sailing career and was still a student at UCLA when we started this campaign. We're learning how to combine those different experiences and strengths while also learning each other as teammates.
The Nacra 17 doesn't give you much time to ease into that process. It's an incredibly fast and technical boat, and so much depends on two people being completely in sync. Communication, timing, boat handling, settings and decision-making all affect each other, and the only real way to develop those things is to spend time together in the boat.
We didn't have much of that time before Worlds, so instead we got an accelerated education.
There were certainly moments in Quiberon where our lack of time together showed, but there were also moments that made us really excited about what we're building. We came away with a much clearer understanding of where the top of the fleet is, where we are relative to it and, most importantly, what we need to work on if we want to become one of those teams.
Proud of Where We Started
Of course we wanted a better number on the results sheet. We're competitive people, and we're doing this because we want to become one of the best teams in the world.
But looking back at what we actually asked of ourselves—showing up at a World Championship with fewer than 30 days together and no formal training—I am incredibly proud of our team.
We didn't wait until everything was organized or until we felt completely ready. We got ourselves there, put the boat on the starting line and started learning.
Now we have a benchmark. We've seen firsthand what the best teams in the world are doing, and we have a much better understanding of the speed, consistency, communication and technical execution it will take to compete with them. Instead of guessing about what we need to become, we got to measure ourselves against it.
That's a pretty exciting place to begin.
Worlds wasn't a culmination of our training. It was the beginning of it. And we left Quiberon proud of what we had managed to put together in such a short amount of time, excited about our partnership and very motivated by everything we now know we can improve.
We have a lot of work ahead of us, and that's exactly what we came here for.
Follow Our Road to LA 2028
We're documenting this campaign through UnMoored, our YouTube series following the sailing, training, relationships and life behind our push toward the LA 2028 Olympic Games.
