Cal golden bear, Willie McBride competes at Miami OCR
Hey everyone,
After five weeks of training and racing in Miami, Florida, I’m finally back at Berkeley getting caught up on homework, but even though I’m back, I’m still processing everything I learned at the numerous clinics and training sessions leading up to Miami OCR.
For the next straight week, we participated in a clinic with Olympians Stu McNay and Graham Biehl, reigning World Champions Erin Maxwell and Isobel Kinsolving, and US Sailing team members Molly Carapiet and Molly O’Bryan Vandermoer. We worked with US Sailing Team coaches Luther Carpenter and Leandro Spina, who pushed us hard, and helped us immensely with our boat handling, and understanding how to tune the boats. It was so helpful to have Graham, Isobel and Molly to imitate and learn from, and they were very open to sharing their techniques and knowledge. In that week alone I think I improved as much as I have in the last year.
After the clinic, Joe went back to school and I moved into Enrique Quintero’s house where I stayed for the rest of the trip. After a few days of boat work, Enrique and I continued the training with a second US Sailing Clinic, waking up at 7 each morning to make it to the gym by 8. At 10:30, we had a briefing, and then went sailing for a few hours before more chalk-talks. The week was exhausting but very rewarding. The second to last day, I did a double session sailing two and a half hours with Enrique, coming in, and then going back out with Stu to sail for two and a half more hours. It was really helpful to sail with Stu, and I was lucky to get to sail with him the day after as well.
After two days of rest, Joe arrived in time for a day of practice before the regatta. The wind was light, and we put up our race sails for the first time. On the water, we tuned with Erin and Isobel, Stu and Graham, Enrique and his crew, and a few other boats – we felt blazing fast. When the regatta arrived I had no regrets; we’d worked hard for a month straight, and were as prepared as we could be. The practice paid off – we were able to hang with most of the fleet right away.
The first two days of racing, we rounded the first mark of every race in the top five. We made a lot of mistakes in boat handling, and downwind decisions that impacted our results, but by the third day our improvements in those areas were the biggest. Light wind proved to be our strength, and on the lightest day, we started off the day with a 4th, and then led the next race all the way around the first lap and a half of the trapezoid course until they abandoned the race.
At the end of the regatta, we missed the US Sailing Team by two overall places (the Finnish team finished between us and Adam Roberts), but with the boat speed and tactics that we demonstrated, I’m very optimistic about regattas to come. Joe has a very good feel for boat speed, and between us, we have a lot of experience sailing in competitive fleets. This summer we’re planning on sailing Kiel Week, a major 470 regatta in Germany, as well as Worlds which will be in Copenhagen, Denmark.
There are so many people who made our trip possible, it’s hard to imagine what we would have done without everyone’s help. We owe huge thanks to Annapolis Yacht Club and the California International Sailing Association, as well as Southport Sailing Foundation for helping fund our trip. Thanks so much to Kevin Burnham who let us use his boat, and to Elizabeth Kratzig who was down at the club almost every day to help us get the boat set up. Thanks to the Swerdloff family and the Quintero family, who put us up at their houses for over a month and provided some delicious food after long days of sailing!