After the road trip to California, the intensity of our training adventure increased a lot. Apologies for such a long delay in the blogging about it. My fingers have been quite sore from gripping the mainsheet, so I have avoided excessive typing. And Casey has been reading Harry Potter books.
We were in San Francisco for 8 days, 5 days of 470 sailing with Jonas, our Swedish coach, and 3 days racing the Vanguard 15 Nationals. All of our sailing was done out of the St. Francis YC right under the Golden Gate Bridge. Just about every afternoon the wind blew 18 to 25 knots! Our goal for this stint of training was to be able to control the 470 in big breeze so our confidence is never shaken because of what the anemometer reads. It worked! We made great progress.
Other things included in the SF experience were: Casey spending some QT with her mom and dad and their new dog, Boone; Bruce and Jonas escorting Nicole to Peña PachaMama to hear the famous soul music of Freddy Clarke & the New World Band; Nicole and Casey soaking in the philosophy of Richard Feeney over Thai food in Sausalito; and Nicole’s rediscovery of her friend Jago MacCloud.
We then headed to Long Beach, where we remain until the trials. Our first two weeks here were spent setting up our new 470 and sailing it from the US Sailing Center. We now are among other 470 teams and have been invited to spar on several occasions. We are on the sheer rock wall of the learning curve now. Our boat handling is being tested by the huge Long Beach waves which accompany the daily 15-20 knot sea breeze. And we are also feeling the growing pains of an expanding understanding of straight line boat speed. The pressure of playing catch up is very real now. We do see our potential to take these teams on successfully, but we still have a lot of space between moments of brilliance.
There is more to tell of our Long Beach story, and many pictures… I promise they will be up soon…
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