Thank you so much for helping fund my trip East to sail in the c420 New England Championships in Connecticut. It was a great event, and the first event toward the c420 Triple Crown for my skipper (Zoey Ziskind) and I. This was our second regatta together, and we were fortunate to have three coaches to pull information from. This was an advantage as all three were able to provide different perspectives for us to draw upon.
We arrived one day before the regatta started. Zoey and I went from the airport straight to rigging our boat and sailing. It wasn’t a very beneficial day, because there was no wind. But with the two hours we did go out in no wind, we were able to look through our boat to make sure everything was in working order. Luckily the boat was in perfect shape.
The first day of the regattas was pretty stressful. This was my skippers first regatta outside of California, so we were both pretty antsy.
I think the most challenging part of the regatta was playing the shifts. You had to look upwind a lot, and your mind always had to be moving. It was really light, which made that easier for Zoey and I because we are good in light wind. We never really had a lot of heavy breeze practice before going into this event, so we were hoping that it would stay like that the whole time. We are very fortunate that it did. The races were tough as we had a difficult time getting off the starting line. I think by the end of the first day, Zoey and I concluded that we needed a lot more practice with starting.
The second day was less stressful, but we still had to work just as hard. The wind was even lighter, which made it harder for everyone. This was because the wind could die at any second, and it did. We were doing really well in a race, because we are so light together, and the race committee decided to abandon the race because the wind shut off. This was very discouraging because we were doing so well. The race committee canceled two of the races that weekend. This was difficult to absorb, especially because we were able to kite our kite full and boat moving the whole time. But that’s racing, and sometimes you benefit from decisions made outside your control, and sometimes you get burned by those decisions.
Thank you again for all your support. This was a really fun and challenging event.