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10th at Sail for Gold
August 16th, 2010 in General.
A lot of things needed to fall just right in the medal race Saturday for us to make a move up the leaderboard after barely squeaking into the tenth spot. The breaks we finally got on Friday didn’t last as we lined up in a gold-star-studded medal race. Seven of the top ten have previous world championships and about half have medals in one class or another. We finished seventh after the left side came in huge and both brazilians we needed to catch came in with it. It is always a lucky thing to race on the last day when the majority of the fleet is packing up. Frankly the race was a little boring because everybody knew what they were doing. There wasn’t much cat and mouse or horseplay. Everybody lined up, tacked on the first shift and pretty cleanly went around the course. Congrats to Peter and Mr Kleen for winning the event.
I’ll be chasing them down in my new PStar just as soon as I can get it rigged. I flew back from London to Chicago Sunday and blasted over to Gull Lake to find a bright new 8423 waiting for me. This is the biggest step that I can make to winning an Olympic medal at the moment. I’m very much looking forward to getting this boat into high gear. Lots of work still to do, but it’s fantastic to have an American boatbuilder as such a strong option for this class. I will keep you updated on the progress here at CampbellSailing.com.
In the News + the new boat is in production!
June 16th, 2010 in General.
There is big news brewing. I just got back to Germany from the massive road trip north with the boat, dropping it off in Weymouth for the next regatta: Sail for Gold in August. Thanks to Andy Mac for lending us 8250, and huge thanks to the Schmitz’s for lending me an animal of a VW! While I’m awaiting my long-awaited flight back to the USA, I’m catching up on a lot of stuff, hopefully it will provide some entertainment.
The biggest news is that the new PStar is under construction in Michigan. We didn’t expect it to go until July, but apparently its already fast! I’m looking forward to getting out to Gull Lake next month to see some of the production before our Melges 32 regatta in Harbor Springs.
Beyond that there are a bunch of articles out right now for some light reading:
Sailing World Magazine has my piece about starting in Current.
SAIL Magazine is running an interview I did with those guys this Spring about the transition between the Laser and the Star.
and RL Magazine has an interview about the finer points of Olympic Campaigns (RL used some great photos from Jacqueline!!! and Fried Elliott).
Can’t wait to be back in the States!
Make sure to thank your race committees!
Win the Medal Race. Fourth Overall at Olympic Garda
May 16th, 2010 in General.
Jacqueline Schmitz Photography will have more shots up tomorrow…
The wind howled out of the north down the mountain passes overnight and this morning but eased just in time for us to start our final race today at 11am. The course was set close to shore for a 30-minute long two lap race. Seeing that the breeze was starting to get fluky in the middle of the lake I opted to wait patiently for a gap at the boat end of the starting line an immediately tacked and headed for the beach. After a minute or so a nice header gave us the opportunity to tack back and cross the fleet as they scrambled to get to the shore after seeing our success. We hooked into a nice left puff at the top of the course and never looked back. Xavier Rohart the former world champion from France was one of the few boats we needed to be concerned with and by winning the race put enough points between him as well as one of our german competitors to pass them in the series to take a fourth place finish. George and Mark, the other Americans in the race today had a tough start near the pin and never recovered, they took second overall. With Rick and Phil tied for tenth, we had a strong showing as a team taking two of the top four and three of the top eleven. This is in large part to our week of training here ahead of time as a group with coaches Leandro Spina and Mark Ivey. With their help hopefully we can capitalize on this performance as we look forward to the European Championships also in Italy in two weeks.
Full results at the Fraglia Vela de Riva website.
Top Ten Results: http://www.fragliavelariva.it/clientfiles/classifica/classifica%20finale%20STAR.pdf
Sixth Place Going into Olympic Garda Medal Race Tomorrow
May 15th, 2010 in General.
This high-cliffed lake has lived up to both it’s epic reputation of funneling breeze as well as being a traditional fickle lake. The wind on both the first and last days of the regatta started strong and ended glassy, while the middle two days had beautiful sailing conditions 12-20 knots and 20 miles of fetch producing some great wave action. Becuase the lake is more than 1000 feet deep at the center the committee often had the fleet bouncing along the steep shore making quite a spectacle for locals and tourists alike. The sight of 40 star boats short-tacking the shoreline often only lengths from beachside hotels along with a backdrop of 5000 foot mountains made for a spectacular bit of racing.
We are sixth going into the final race of the regatta where only the top ten left will compete for double points. Results are at the Fraglia Vela of Riva an Malcesine’s websites: http://www.fragliavelariva.it/public_new/RegataDetail.asp?RegataID=226
Jacqueline will have photos shortly. We’ll let you know how tomorrow turns out!
New Awesome CISA Video
May 7th, 2010 in General.
Here’s the follow up from the CISA Clinic 2010. If you’ve never been involved with the clinic this video will be a great introduction to what we do. If you’ve done the clinic before you’ll enjoy, no doubt!
CISA Advanced Racing Clinic from Jacqueline Schmitz on Vimeo.
New Sponsor Announced: Go Raise Green
May 4th, 2010 in Travel, Training, General.
After a serious amount of European driving I made it to Lake Garda Monday with the boat and met our two other American boats, our training partners. Brad and I made it out for a shakedown sail today after spending the morning rigging in steady rain. When we drove in yesterday there was no wind at all, but we woke up this morning to 25 knots and chilly weather. We sailed in 15-18 knots for about an hour to stretch in the new rig. This is a fantastic place for boat racing. Even in the chilly rain the lake surpasses all expectations I had for it. I’m looking forward to a week of training here.
This week also marks the announcement of a new partnership with Go Raise Green (www.goraisegreen.com), a company that supports fundraising efforts and event promotion through sustainable products. Look out for these guys at fundraisers and regattas in the future, I’m really psyched to be involved with Go Raise Green. I’m confident that their focus on sustainability can make an imact on how regatta, clinic, and sailing program organizers approach their outreach and event planning.
More to come from Lake Garda at www.CampbellSailing.com.
Six countries in 24 hours
May 1st, 2010 in General.
I arrived in England yesterday, twice. First I flew in from Washington to London’s Heathrow Airport before catching a connecting flight across the channel to Dusseldorf. Once there I met a driver to take me to Jackie’s family’s hometown of Krefeld in western Germany. After a quick shower and freshen up I picked up the car and started my way across into Holland, Belgium and France to Calais where I got onto a ferry back to England, just 12 hours after I was first here. After spending the night I drove on to the US Team warehouse in Weymouth to pick up Andy MacDonald’s boat and haul it to Italy for our training camp at Lake Garda that starts next week. All’s well so far. Just hope my guy meets me to unlock the warehouse even though it’s May Day this weekend and a bank holiday across Europe. It is holiday season afterall here (ie every Friday with a good forecast). Planes, ferries and automobiles will continue at www.CampbellSailing.comÂ
8th in New World Rankings, To Europe Next
April 22nd, 2010 in General.
One week from today, I head overseas for an extended trip to Europe, two training camps and two regattas at Lake Garda and Viareggio, Italy. I’m definitely looking forward to the training time and the regatta opportunities. The trip will begin picking up the borrowed car in Germany, driving to Weymouth to pickup the borrowed boat and then hauling back south to Garda, we’ll let you know how that goes.
Meanwhile the new ISAF World Rankings List has us into the top 10 at 8.
Breeze Eases, 10th at Western Hemispheres
April 17th, 2010 in General.
The breeze eased to a measly 10-16 knots today for the final two races at the Western Hemisphere Championships. The early start had a tinge of deja vu as 15 knots funneled into Nassau Harbour as we ventured out at 830am. Once we got to the course the wind moderated slightly and went 30 degrees right as it happened. Unfortunately we were on the left side of the first beat in race 1 and rounded in the 25 range. With some work on the runs and second beat we were able to scrape through to a 12th place finish. In race two I misjudged our position in our final approach and we were well late to the start. Fortunately the boat was finally getting to proper tune and we made a nice comeback upwind and downwind to finish 6th. With the throwout in effect we finished 10th overall tied with our roomates from the week Rick and Phil. Their winning the first race today rectified their double DNC day yesterday after they wrote off a mast.
I feel like this week was a wake up call for how to prepare myself for a breezy regatta. Having CISA Clinic finish so shortly before the regatta and virtually no tuning time didn’t do me any favors to have a great event. I was frustrated at time with how we sailed and I’ve left much room for improvement, but taking this as a training regatta leading into the Europeans in June we should be in good shape by then.
We leave for Europe in two weeks heading to Lake Garda after a lot of driving and then Viareggio, Italy.
Results here.
Windy again Friday in Nassau
April 16th, 2010 in General.
Although the forecast called for easing easterlies, the weatherman was not quite right today as 15-22 knot easterlies created good sailing conditions again in Nassau. If we were in Europe it would certainly be called relentless breeze, but because it’s 75 degrees and the water is also 75, the conditions are something closer to ideal. Even though 5 masts have fallen this week, the meeting of Star big-wigs concluded that the Western Hemispheres would indeed return to Nassau in 2012 after next years event in Illinois.
We had a much better day on the water, although the points total was much the same as yesterday. We rounded both top marks in the top 10, showing an improvement in speed. We were third or fourth to the first mark of the day only to find our number on the board as an OCS boat. We rallied in race 2 from a 7th place rounding to a third by the finish line. It was good to have a finish though. Our roommates Rick and Phil bent their mast so badly in a gybe in the first race that they had to come in and write-off the aluminum for scrap. Luckily they saved the new mainsail, but unfortunately had a DNF, DNC for today’s scores.
Tomorrow’s start time will be two hours earlier than the rest of the week 10am; with a 1330 cut-off to end racing. We’re probably looking at two more races, likely in similar breeze to what we’ve had.