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Perth Training in Full Swing & America’s Cup WS San Diego Photos
November 28th, 2011 in Travel, Training.
Ian and I have been running around between the local venues before we move into the Royal Perth Yacht Club Annex today. We’ve had a great week of sailing down here. Breezy some days, really breezy on others! The water is warmer than we suspected and the wind is generally relentless. It’s cooled off some after the boiler we had upon first arrival, but the heat will be back on before the weekend. The town is starting to get set up for the regatta, which starts for half the fleets first thing next week.
Jackie’s put up her photos from America’s Cup World Series in San Diego last week. They look great. Click here to check them out: jacquelinecampbellphotography.com/blog
Here’s a preview:
More to come from www.CampbellSailing.com.
Also check out the twitter feed @campbellsailing
Thanks to our sponsors:
And we’re off…
November 9th, 2011 in Travel, General.
The first leg of a couple en route to Fremantle, Australia for the Worlds starts tomorrow. We’re heading south from a cooling Washington DC to the Cayman islands for a few days of fun racing with Jackie’s TP52 team Powerplay. Then west to San Diego for some R & R and America’s Cup World Series spectating. Then we’re heading down under. Luckily, I’ve got the photographer with me so expect some awesome shots here at www.CampbellSailing.com as well as on Jackie’s blog jacquelinecampbellphotography.com/blog (she’s just finished a photo essay on Weymouth and Portland where the Olympic regatta will be held next summer). Also check out the twitter feed as well. More to come…
Bitter End Yacht Club Pro Am Report
November 7th, 2011 in Travel, Regattas.
Only a week ahead of the 2011 Bitter End Pro Am, Ian and I were pushing ourselves through two weeks of training on the cooling Chesapeake Bay. We were meant to pack up the boat and take the next couple weeks easy, off the water and in the gym, when I got word from the BVI that they needed another sailor to fit the role of a Pro for their annual event. How could I do anything but jump at the opportunity to sail at the much acclaimed event? With such short notice I was skeptical that I could make it work, but some creative planning and it was a go. This year’s list of invited professionals presented a great field: Ed Baird, Dave Ullman, Peter Holmberg, Zach Railey and Anna Tunnecliffe Funk. Their experience with the event in year’s past gave me a lot of brains to pick about how to approach the racing and the regatta. What a better group to be able to go racing against?
The concept of the Bitter End YC Pro Am is primarily for sailors to have a great time on the water. The location is simply unparalleled at the northern tip of Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands. Tropical easterlies are common in early November and the heat is tempered by a quick dip in the clear water all around. Guests can only arrive to the hotel via water, which sets the tone of the week. The Bitter End Yacht Club is an incredible hotel that has used the event to attract sailors from all over the US and around the world with its fantastic assortment of watersports and outdoors activities. They have what seems like an endless supply of options for sailing (racing or not), windsurfing, kayaking, paddle boarding, snorkleing and more available to all the guests of the hotel. The Pro Am Regatta is a promotion that allows all the guests of the hotel to race with some of the top professionals in the sport, whether they came down to specifically take part in the regatta or just happened to be on holiday. This set up a great variety of experience and generally unbelievable enthusiasm for each and every day’s racing. Racing open cockpit J24s called IC24s makes the boathandling a piece of cake and allows experienced sailors to be comfortable as well as first timers to get a quick handle on the sport. I sailed with close to thirty people through the course of the regatta switching crews in just about every race. I can’t think of one moment where my companions weren’t without a smile on their faces enjoying the sport of sailing. What a great thing! Because of the varied experience levels we could be having multiple conversations at once: sometimes taking about sailboat racing strategy, sometimes talking about weather, telling old stories about the other pros, teaching basic sailing concepts. It was all fair game!
I could certainly go into the specifics of the racing, but I’ll let the curmudgeon talk about that in his reports: www.sailingscuttlebutt.com. He’s probably got a better idea of the details anyway. The first day of sailing is racing in the dinghies. Day two is an IC24 “distance” race to a strange part of the island where massive boulders have piled up along the beach called The Baths. We race back upwind in the afternoon. Tuesday through Friday is IC24 fleetracing consisting of both intense and really fun one-design short course racing. Friday afternoon is the title-fight pairing the leaders up into match racing for a really exciting finish. We had a great week, finishing second to Ed Baird in the fleet racing, and I had to run on Friday afternoon so I unfortunately had to bail out on match racing. What a great event though. I can certainly recommend the regatta to anybody interested in putting in a lot of hours on the water while still enjoying an amazing time away from it all. Also many thanks to BEYC and the regatta organizers for the invitation. I look forward to racing with you all again!
Next on the calendar are a few days here in DC, followed by a few more in San Diego. Then we’re off to Australia to prep for the Worlds. I’ll be updating both here on www.CampbellSailing.com as well as on Twitter. We’re going to be putting up loads of photo and video content from our adventure down under so stay tuned!
Thanks to our sponsors:
In Ireland standing by for Training ahead of Europeans
August 29th, 2011 in Travel, Training.
I’ve made it to Dun Loaghaire (pronounced dun leery) and the Royal St. Georges Yacht Club and will spend the next five days tuning and training in preparation for the Europeans. Please keep up to date here at www.CampbellSailing.com and I’ve been uploading photos from the trip so far on my twitter feed: @campbellsailing
Back from Spain, Stars on the Horizon
August 8th, 2011 in Travel, Training, Regattas.
I just finished up racing this past week in Palma de Mallorca, Spain in the Copa del Rey as a fill-in tactician for the Yasha Samauri Melges 32 team. While good results were tough to come by, we improved significantly through the week as the team is on the upswing of their progression towards the M32 Worlds in Palma in September. I joked with some of my teammates that I had only been to Palma in March and April for the Princesa Sofia regatta, and what a difference a few months makes. Palma is a fantastic place to race spring or summer, but let me tell you its warmer in the summer. We were a few boats down from the Prince racing on the TP52 Hispano at the dock, so the scene at the Real Club Nautico de Palma was a little bit different from my years racing off the gritty beach down at C’an Pastilla as well! It truly was a race for the King’s Cup when he and the Queen hand out the awards.
The next month will be spent preparing for our next Star event in Dublin Ireland during the first week of September. The Pre-Olympic Test Event is going on in Weymouth right now, so I’m motivated to get my program back up and running after a well enjoyed month off. What an amazing amount of sailing and now Ian and I can get back to Star sailing refreshed and ready.
Jackie’s put an update on her website with some great photos she took at Weymouth in June to give you an idea of what the sailors are looking at this week at the test event:
JacquelineCampbellPhotography.com
Block Island, Upstate NY and the Chesapeake. Happy 4th of July
July 5th, 2011 in Travel, General.
It’s been a busy couple weeks of traveling since we got home from England mid-June. The day after we got home from England, Ian and I enjoyed a great reception at the Tred Avon Yacht Club where nearly 100 members joined us for dinner and a presentation about what an Olympic Star Campaign is all about. Photos and video showed the crowd where we’ve been since January and gave a glimpse into the work and fun we’ve been into on and off the water.
Farr40s at Block Island (Photo: Rolex/Daniel Forster)
Block Island
A couple days at home to do laundry and prep for the next trip of the month and my first time on Block Island. We drove up and took the ferry across for a great week of fun but terribly light-air Race Week. Honestly the Island came across as very similar to Portland (where we had just spent three weeks in England). The countryside in Block Island with its sweeping ocean views, small farms, rock walls, rabbits and sailors was similar in many ways to Old England. Ironically the breeze at BI didn’t live up to its English counterpart. The round-the-island race was far and away the most interesting part of the week for me. The breeze filled nicely for the race, and I was a bit out of my element trying to navigate with a paper chart with my notes for what I thought the current would be doing. Our bowman did have the GPS running and was navigating with me, but making decisions about tactical placement against our competitors as well as current decisions on the fly was an exciting change of pace from windward-leeward racing. We led our fleet the entire way around the course even after short-tacking the sandbar to the north end of the island and then blowing out our spinnaker on the eastside run. We finished second of the Farr40s but I think that everybody had a great time and learned a few things over the course of the week. I have to thank the McNeils for their hospitality all week and for always having a fun team.
A1 about to take-off (photo: AC)
Upstate NY
After BI, we headed west to spend a couple days on Keuka Lake with my grandparents there. The big excitement certainly is the celebration of 100 years of Naval Aviation thanks to Hammondsport local Glenn Curtiss. Grandpa Art has had significant involvement in the Curtiss Museum there for many years and they have been a major focal point for the US Navy as they celebrate their centennial in the air thanks to Curtiss’ flying boats. The things are incredible to watch take flight on the lake. I love to see this centennial parallel the Star class centennial. Naval aviation has gone from one dude and his crazy flying boats on Keuka Lake to supersonic ship-launched hell-raisers. The Star class has been there for the duration, maybe not supersonic but no less persistent.
Myself and Nick Deane on board Koala adjusting trim (Photo Jacqueline Campbell)
Chesapeake, 4th of July
We made it back to DC in time for the 4th of July weekend. What better way to celebrate than head to the Eastern Shore and go for a boat-ride. We took Jackie’s family’s 35-foot Hallberg-Rassy Koala from its berth in Oxford, through Tilghman Island and around to St. Michael’s for fireworks there Saturday night and back to Oxford for Sunday’s show. I think I might be navigated out for the next month between avoiding rocks while going around Block Island and then avoiding sand bars and Chesapeake boaters on the shore this weekend. What better time spent on the water? We’re heading out to Sheboygan this weekend for a bit of match-race practice. July is going to be a light month of Star sailing, before we look to get back into gear August and September.
More to come from www.CampbellSailing.com.
Thanks to our sponsors:
6th at Trofeo Princesa Sofia
April 11th, 2011 in Travel, Regattas.
Unfortunately, we had a bit of an ugly start to our medal race in Palma. We were pretty fired up to have a good race with good potential to move back up the leaderboard and get onto the podium with a good finish in the ten-boat final race. The only potential snag I could foresee was that the Italian Olympic Trials was going on at this event and there would be two Italian teams in the medal race: Diego Negri and Francesco Bruni. Having raced against Francesco last week in the Congressional Cup I figured he would be after Diego in the pre-start and that we needed to be clear of that mess; we had too many other boats to race against.
Sure enough, Diego and Francesco were sitting at the committee boat end at the warning and about to commence their duel. Ian and I had been struggling for height all we so we figured we should try and get down to leeward of the group anyway. We were set up with a nice gap between us and the French team at the pin with about 30 seconds to go when Diego and Francesco come screaming down the line. I closed the gap to ensure Diego went past. He did, sailing all the way to the pin. But in defending the pin, the French opened up a larger gap than I realized to leeward of us. I saw Francesco sail behind us a few seconds later and brushed it off, fully confident that he would continue to the pin to attack Diego. I looked at him and he indicated that was his plan. I assumed wrong. Francesco changed his mind about a second later and came head to wind in our gap to leeward. We were both about a half length over the line with 10 seconds to go and even with a substantial bear-away I couldn’t get back to the pre-start side. I’m fairly confident he was over the line with us at the start, but when the X flag went up I knew we should go back, and when we dipped the line the X came right down. We spent the rest of the race well behind, only able to pass Bruni and Alex Schlonski on the last run to the finish to take 8th in the race and 6th in the regatta.
The scores were so close in the end with a three-way tie for second place, it will continue to drive me crazy until we can get a chance to redeem ourselves next week at Hyeres Semaine Olympique Francaise. We had every opportunity in the world to make things happen and I committed a fatal error that cost us at that start. The reality is we had so many boats to worry about we got too passive. If we had only one boat to chase, we probably would have been more focused to make something specific happen. Lots of “what ifs” but the biggest reality of it all was the missed opportunity on race day 5 with two races in the teens. Things always feel like they come down to the last race, but we have some tuning issues that we need to take care of to really get ourselves on track to consistently win medals here.
Masts and sails are going to be the top expenses over the next three months. We have some flights booked and some housing, but I’m mostly concerned about making sure our equipment is correct for the rest of the spring leading into Weymouth. At the moment, as much as this campaign is on the cusp of being on the very top level we are also on the financial brink. I will be reaching out to many of you over the next few weeks to enlist your help for this final push to win the next two events just as we have been so close to doing in the last two World Cup Events.
Full Results: www.trofeoprincesasofia.org
Our sponsors have been vital to our efforts thus far: US Sailing Team AlphaGraphics, Sperry Top-sider, Kaenon Polarized, Harken, San Diego YC Sailing Foundation, as well as many individuals and families from around the country. Annapolis YC Foundation has boosted our support this month while we have been in Europe covering Ian and my airfare and ferry for Palma. Thank you all very much. We look forward to your continued support.
After taking the ferry from Palma back to the mainland and dropping Ian at the airport in Barcelona. I continued on the road in a massive caravan from Barcelona to Hyeres, France. Probably a hundred trailers and teams made the journey in a massive armada on the highway. Its nice to get a friendly wave and a thumbs-up from another sailor letting you know that the trailer looks good every once in a while. On this trip it was like a mini-boatpark every time we got to a toll plaza!
I’ll fly back to the States from France to get ready for the CISA Clinic which starts Thursday in Long Beach, CA. I’ll do my best to have updates from CISA at www.CampbellSailing.com. www.CISASailing.org has all the info you might need as well if you have young sailors interested in the best youth sailing clinic in the world. This year we have 15 world-class coaches for our 115 young sailors. This will be my third year running the clinic and I’m excited to be involved again. We’re going to work hard to make these 4 days the best training of the year for these sailors, hopefully giving them a taste of what we have just been doing in Europe the last two weeks.
Here’s what CISA Clinic is all about:
USA 8423
February 8th, 2011 in Travel, Training, General.
I had a question posted last week during the OCR asking about whether we were continuing to charter and borrow boats like we had been the last two years or whether I’d settled on a boat. The Beg Borrow and All-but-Steal Era is for the most part over. Without the help of a number of very generous members of the Star class, I wouldn’t have had the introduction that I did. Timely offers from sailors in various fleets coinciding with convenient delivery schemes and other acts of indenture enabled me to race a number of different types of boats in varying locations throughout the world. Charters were not uncommon in this process, but the costs involved were far less than investing in a boat at the time, and also gave me insight into the choice I would make when purchasing a boat for the final effort into these Olympic Trials. Through a not-so-minor effort of borrowing and fundraising this summer I was able to buy a new boat from a builder in Michigan called PStar. Their website is actually a great resource to check out how the boats were designed and how they are built now. I think my boat was the 12th off their mold and about 5th from the Michigan facility. My brother and I drove out and picked the boat up in August and I spent much of the fall in Oxford, MD rigging and prepping the boat for the winter season in Miami.
The boat being rigged and deck grip: photo-81.jpg
In the water primed for racing at OCR: photo-91.jpg
I had a number of private donors help on the costs for the boat. But in addition, we had a number of product sponsors come in and help finish production on the boat. The entire boat is rigged with Harken blocks and hardware of varying size and purpose. The lines and running rigging are all thanks to New England Ropes. The deck grip and cockpit non-skid are custom fit for the PStar mold by MacDesigns in Newport, RI. I bought three masts from to test over the winter and unfortunately broke one of them in January during training, so we will only send two to Europe.The process of getting a boat to Europe is quite an undertaking. I’ve spent most of the week home from OCR dealing with the logistics of getting a Carnet (basically a boat passport to prove its not going to be permanently imported) and starting to look at the timing for the unload in Barcelona in 6 weeks or so. At that point we’ll have to get the boat onto a ferry bound for Palma to be ready for training leading into that regatta. It’s all fun to think about especially when we have another week of training left in Miami, Bacardi Cup, a USSailingTeam AlphaGraphics Physical Training Camp in Colorado Springs, and Congressional Cup to think about before Palma even comes on the radar screen! These are just minor details in the day of any Olympic campaign right now.
Next on the docket is shipping on the 14th, followed by a spot of training in Miami. I’m going to finish the week with a bit of match racing also in Miami to keep sharp for some more racing and coaching this spring. More to come from CampbellSailing.com
Harbor Springs to Weymouth
August 4th, 2010 in Travel, Regattas.
Back on the race course this couple of weeks. I spent last weekend racing with Team Ninkasi at the shorter-than-expected Melges 32 Nationals in Harbor Springs Michigan. We had one stellar day of training and two nice days of racing before Lake Michigan decided it had had enough and shut down the windmaker for both Saturday and Sunday. Without a throwout, we had to forgo any chance at a comeback and finished 9th. Not only was the sailing nice, but the town was a slice of paradise. We had sunny and warm conditions that I frankly didn’t expect considering we were racing on the 45th parallel. The town is was full of friendly tourists and people enjoying their summer cottages to the point where we began mistaking it for the set of “The Truman Show” and worried about bumping into the wall of the set if we went too far upwind, and kept seeing the same cars go by all the time. Cue the sun…
I was immediately thrust back into reality when I flew across the pond to London the day after the regatta ended and took the train into Weymouth. Grey skies and appropriately bitter Englanders noticeably didn’t greet me all that kindly as I wandered to the boatpark the last couple of days while training in Stars on the 2012 Olympic course.
We prepped for the Sail for Gold Olympic Classes World Cup event to be held here next week. As if lining up with Szabo/Strube, Merriman/Trinter, and Horton/Lyne wasn’t good enough we had two other Silver Star winners: Marrazi and O’Leary as well as two more Gold Stars: Scheidt and Grael on the practice line today for 8-25 knots of both sunshine and English rain.
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.