Happy Belated New Year! Believe it or not... I sailed throughout the holidays at home in Vancouver. Some days were nice... Others not so much, for my hands especially. My first day in 2011 was on Jan 7th - a beautiful sunny westerly of 20-25knots. Super fun but quite cold, loved it nonetheless :)
Since arriving on the 9th of January to Miami, it's been all go with training. Plenty of warmer on the water hours coupled with my gym and cardio routine had me feeling pretty strong leading into this event. I had been training with a few of the top sailors and raced in the Alex Caviglia BlueWater Classic (a 3-day regatta) last weekend. Conditions were light to marginal (my toughest) and although I battled it out every day, I couldn't stay with the lead girls. I finished 6th overall - not a result I'm terribly stoked about - but a great warm-up regatta both physically and more importantly mentally as it really got my head back into racing.
The first World Cup of 2011 got underway here in the Bay of Biscayne, Miami today. We had 10-14 knots and fairly sunny skies. In the first race I didn't get off to the best start, quickly falling behind a girl that just got ahead of me and then once in bad air, I went downhill quick. I ended up tacking out to the right and trying making the best of my bad start. I ended up rounding the top mark in around 7th, then made some gains to close the gap on the girls ahead of me on the downwind, but then didn't have a great 2nd upwind and last leg (missed a windshift) to end up finishing 12th. Bummer. The second race, I had a mediocre start, worked hard to try to protect my lane - only to hit a plastic bag or something that went "thump" against my fin and slowed me to an almost complete stop. Luckily, it came off easily and was able to get back into the race quickly. I had some good speed, tacked in the right place and rounded the top mark in 5th. Throughout the race there were plenty of weeds... And I had to stop and clear them about 4 times - it happened to all, but if you got lucky you didn't hit them as many times. I got reeled in by a few girls on the next few legs to hold onto a 9th place finish for that race. Two races down with 9 more to go.... Lots can happen!
Check out the Miami OCR results by clicking here: Results <http://rmocr.ussailing.org/2011/Results.htm>
And I wouldn't be able to go fast without saying a huge THANK YOU to Chapman Land Surveying for helping me replace my older broken board with a new one that I'm racing here with, named: "The Little Engine That Could." Very happy to have a new board :))
Tomorrow's forecast calls for a bit more breeze than today... So let's keep our fingers crossed for great starts, super speed & smarts, and some great finishes for me!!!
Oh...and you can follow the races with live coverage every day, Jan. 24-29. Tweets from the racecourses, fans can ask questions, photos, videos, results – all day.http://rmocr.ussailing.org/Rolex_Miami_OCR.htm or direct to the live page http://rmocr.ussailing.org/live_4823.htm
Nikola
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