Mids East Feb 2010

We drove the big Trailer from Fort Lauderdale to Clearwater beach right after the Radial and Finn regatta.

The weather forcast was bad but I had a chance the next day to patch the Joker coach boat before it began raining for the next 5 days. Temperatures went down to 3C at night with highs of 9 in the days, this made training very similar to Vancouver in the winter so we should have been used to it but it still seemed cold!

The bulk of the group arrived on the Saturday the 13th. We had 11 sailors at the event: Mike Leigh, Alex Heinzman, Andy Wong, Chris Tulip, Beckey Power, Joanna Moore, Isabella Bertold, Jaime Bone, Jen Spalding, Ricardo and Natalia Montemayer.

Sunday, Monday and Tuesday were hard training days. We had plenty of breeze with tired bodies at the end of each day. Some of the best Laser and Radial sailors in the world had hung around after the Miami/Ft Lauderdale regattas,(something to do with such a cold winter in Europe, I suspect). This allowed for some excellent training opportunities for all our team.

The regatta started with solid breeze, both the Lasers and the Radials were split into 2 fleets , so there were 5 starts for each race, (with the 4.7 ).

My job at this point was to be at each start for the 4 starts our sailors were in then maybe a quick shot to the weather mark and then down to the finish line.

2 races on the Thursday and 3 on Friday , the breeze was less the 2nd day but it seemed to be the coldest day by far, many were afraid they wouldn't last the day.

By mid regatta Mike and Jen were well up in the standings with good moments from the rest of the team. Excellent training regatta in a high caliber fleet.

The weather improved for the last 2 days and were becalmed prior to the racing on the Sunday. The race committee did a nice job all thru the event getting the races off and had 2 races in decent breeze to end the regatta.

Jen finished the event 4th with many races in the top 2, Isabella was going great prior to the event and had some real highlights but couldn't quite put it together , she ended 29th.
Mike was his consistent self ending in 5th overall, winning one race and 2nd in another.
Ricardo had some real bright moments and finished 27th, right on the heels of most of our National team sailors.
Chris Tulip had a number of great first beats but had issues getting to the finish up the fleet. Andy and Alex did well and made the Gold fleet, but struggled after that.

Becky , Natalia and Joanna all were in silver fleet and all seemed to improve thru the event with Natalia making a charge to lead this group at the end. She was 8th and Becky 9th.

The rain held off for the trailer loading on Sunday afternoon and a few hours later we were set to go. Chris Cowan came out to help drive the rig home and after a drop off at the airport Monday morning we were heading north on the 95, only 6,300 kms to go.

The next event is the Midwinter West Laser Champs in Richmond California on March 26-28.

Al