NIKOLA GIRKE- Sailing

After returning home from the Pan Am Games, I completed a hard two weeks of training at home, both on and off the water in what were some pretty great November conditions in English Bay, all in preparation for my trip to Perth - and the upcoming World Championships/Olympic Qualifiers. I was relieved to finally have everything packed and done when I got on the plane last week to Perth. After a super long day of travel, a Vancouver to Sydney flight (luckily direct but still 15+hrs), then another 5 hour flight from Sydney to Perth, I finally arrived, safe and sound, somewhat tired and luckily with all my equipment in tact. 

Excited about sailing in warm and sunny Perth, I went out for a session on my first day (always helps with the jet lag). The next day was very stormy, rainy and cold - which gave me a perfect chance to get myself organized: I food shopped, got my gym membership, phone card etc. Since we were starting a 4 day 'coaches run regatta' the following day, I didn't mind taking this day off. 

There were 3 races each day for the last 4 days. The coaches organized this regatta and charged an entry fee so that there would be some prize money at the end for the top competitors, and more importantly so that the competitors would actually take the regatta a bit more seriously than "just training races". I broke my batten on the first day before racing so I sailed 3 races like that... not the best and thus my results suffered a bit from that. However for day 2, 3, and 4 I had gear that worked and I was able to test my speed and my racing skills against many of the sailors that are here training. One of the days got really windy and with the bay being quite shallow, the waves/chop made it very difficult and sometimes a bit scary upwind as we get launched off the waves, but they also make for some particularly sketchy downwinds. Attached is a picture of me leading this crazy windy downwind! I think we were about 20+ girls. I managed to have quite a few good races amongst the 12 race regatta and finished the event off in 3rd....which meant prize money...$100!!! Ok, so it's not that much, but since we never get prize money, this is the most I've ever won for an RSX event :) Here in Perth, everything is so unbelievably expensive that I gladly welcomed this addition to my funding...

The online magazine Sail-World.com has also just released an article on me yesterday...click here to read it: Perth 2011 - Canada’s RS:X Champ Nikola Girke shares love and luck  <http://sail-world.com/Australia/index.cfm?SEID=0&amp;Nid=90975&amp;SRCID=0&amp;ntid=0&amp;tickeruid=0&amp;tickerCID=0>

 And...that's all for now. I'm having 2 days off the water before I get back out there...today I went to check out Perth and tomorrow I'm heading down the coast to the infamous Margaret River.

The first day of racing of the World Championships is on the 5th of December. I'll be sending details on how to follow results etc then, but you can also check out the website of the Perth 2011 ISAF World Championships <http://www.perth2011.com>

Thank you for your continued support.


Nikola