Thank you so much for your consideration in helping fund myself and the rest of my team to attend the 2018 U.S. Youth Match Racing Championships at Oakcliff Sailing Center. The experiences and lessons I learned were unlike any other event I have ever attended. Without your help, I would never have been able to participate in the event and get one step closer to attending the ISAF Youth Match Racing World Championships.
I wanted to give a brief review of the regatta to describe how the event went. We began the event with two training days that contained a variety of conditions including 15-knot winds to thunderstorms to no wind and rain. Although these two days were difficult were learned a ton from our competitors and Dave Perry. The first day of racing was very light, and we did not begin racing till around 2:30 in the afternoon. Once we began racing the conditions were very shifty and unpredictable. We ended the day on a record of 3 wins and two losses. As the second day of racing began, we knew that we had to have a good day so we could make the semi-finals. Once again there was no wind, so we didn’t begin racing till around 3:30. The conditions at that time were almost un-sailable. There were approximately 2 knots of wind and 1 knot of current with dangerously shifty conditions. These posed very difficulty for our team, and we ended the day on a one win and three loss record. Although, this was very disappointing to us we knew that we could learn from the experience and better prepare for the next time we experienced these conditions. The final day of racing turned out to be the worst yet. We ended up not even sailing due to lack of wind. While we were disappointed with our final result of 7th place we knew that we could learn from our time at Oakcliff and keep striving to achieve our overall goals.
Once again, thank you so much for your support. Without your help and funding, we never would have been able to attend the 2018 Rose Cup and further develop our match racing skills in our journey to the 2019 ISAF Youth Match Racing Worlds.