Hey all,
It's been a while since my last post; I've been quite busy with sailing and christmas.
Just last month Sandringham Yacht Club hosted the first event of the ISAF World Cup tour, Sail Melbourne. I was lucky enough to be sponsored by Pak'n'Save to attend. It was an amazing trip, got to go all around Melbourne City, to the Vic markets (so much better than Auckland's) and I was just around the corner from Oprah at one point, missed her by 10m. I met at least half of the windsurfing Victoria community who were all extremely nice and I got to demo a bunch of great 2011 JP and Neil Pryde gear (am loving the atlas sail and the 98L freestyle). I even ended up buying a 79L Naish Wave which has been great to use back here in NZ.
When it came down to the racing we had a lot of variable weather, it really was four seasons in one day. Sadly we didn't actually have any highwind days, or planing days for that matter. The last race of the last day we managed to plane just about two downwind legs and half an upwind, truthfully diabolical especially with a non-planing, very wide slalom finish.
Overall I placed 15th women and 4th youth, regrettably a couple of small mistakes put me 20 seconds outside the time limit in the last race and that cost me darely as I was mere points away from getting 3rd. It was all good experience learning what a proper race committee is like at these events and I've come away knowing what I need to work on.
I've had a great christmas and new years and am now back into the swing of training, preparing for Sail Auckland and Nationals, my selection trials for this years ISAF Youth Worlds, NZ's team for the Open Youth Worlds and for the ISAF Sailing Worlds.
It's going to be fun.
