Season reflections
Written by Hannah Diamond | 01 October 2013
Coming to the end of the racing season for 2013, we have been looking back at how far we have come since the beginning of the year, from trying (and failing!) to keep the boat in the water downwind in February to perfecting our wave technique in September we have come a long way as a team in a short time.
At the end of August we had our European Championships in Lake Como, Italy. Coming off the back of a really successful World Championships in Holland, we were looking at the Europeans to really test our boat speed and learn as much as we could. We started well finishing the first day in 4th overall and from then on, anything that could have gone wrong did go wrong! This included being capsized on by another boat causing damage that led to us having to retire and spending a long evening piecing the boat back together, a rudder bolt snapping whilst coming 3rd going downwind in 18 knots of breeze – something neither of us want to experience again! 2 x OCS from second row starts and a DSQ. By the end of the week and considering all that had happened we were obviously disappointed but happy with our boatspeed in the super flat water of Lake Como, and it was a good reminder of just how much we still have to learn about these boats!!
Next up was the City of Santander Trophy, the test event for next year's ISAF World Championships. It was an opportunity to learn about the venue for the event which is the first opportunity to qualify the country for the 2016 Olympic Games. In terms of racing, we had a small fleet and we wanted to take away as much knowledge as we could about all of the race areas. We are still trying new things with the boats and we were pleased to be leading the event from the beginning. Our boat speed in the light winds and swell was really good and we are still making gains around the course. We got a chance to try the medal race course, inside the harbour on day 3 which was a completely different style of racing with 3 laps in 20 minutes – super physical in only 8 knots of breeze!! The penultimate day of racing was a day of learning for us with a few silly mistakes meaning we were equal first but second on countback going into the medal race. We were really excited to get racing and get back into the lead but again, the curse of the medal race day stuck again and we waited until late afternoon for wind which never appeared so we had to settle for silver. It was a good lesson for us to never sit back and that every point counts and we will definitely take that forwards into our last event in La Rochelle, beginning on the 9th October.
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