Silver at Hyeres Olympic Sailing Week
We have just finished up sailing in Hyeres. This was an interesting event for many reasons, we had 17 teams competing, so the organizers decided that instead of splitting us into groups we would sail a full round robin. This meant more racing, with each team sailing at least 16 races. The one thing that they didn't expect was the amount of wind we were going to have. All but two days were called off early due to too much wind or the race committee being unable to hold their anchor. We ended up not getting in the full round robin because on the last day we had a breakdown and missed one race. As we were headed out to sail our last race the race committee sent us in. Since the round robin was not completed, the scores were figured out by using our win percentages. We ended up second. We won 12 races and lost 3. It was a bummer to not finish the round robin.
We are now in Weymouth getting ready for our trials which start on Friday, May 4th. It's lovely here, with temps in the low 40's, rain, oh and it's blowing 30 today. Yesterday, on our trip down to Weymouth we stopped at an amusement park, called Thorpe Park. It was really fun, despite the drizzling rain and cold temperatures. The craziest ride we went on was sort of NASCAR themed, it was called speedway and it proudly flew the stars and stripes. It went from 0-80 in under 2 seconds, then went up a huge loop and back down, then the ride was over. It lasted about 30 amazing seconds.
In other news, the US Sailing Team has named a new title sponsor, Sperry Top-Sider. They have signed on for the next four and a half years. We have been working individually with them for about a year and a half and are very happy to have them named the teams new title sponsor!
