Back to somewhat normal?
The start of summer in the UK has been very welcome after a long winter of studying for me! Long warm days on the water is what I’ve been dreaming of for the last few months and I’ve certainly been making the most of it!
I have continued my coaching with a JPK 10.80 team in their preparations for the Fastnet and they have set off on their first qualification races and it has been great to see how they have progressed so far, with much more to come before start day in August! Christchurch Bay has been the perfect training ground to work through sail changes and crossovers with the crew.
Redshift has been back out on the water racing both inshore and offshore, the modifications to the boat from over the winter have all been centred around a Fastnet campaign so it’s always a challenge to race an offshore optimised boat round a short course against inshore optimised boats but it offers great learning and certainly came in handy during our 37 tacks (at least) up the back of the Island shore during the Morgan Cup at the weekend!
I’ve been really honoured to be asked to do a lot more commentary and speaking but the only problem so far has been that I’m competing in the same events that I’m being asked to commentate for so I wish I could do both and hopefully my schedule will allow me to combine the two a bit more in the future!
I have finished my studies for the summer after an incredible placement in a Neuro inpatient setting, which I absolutely loved and now have 3 months of focussing on my sailing before returning for more studies at the end of the UK sailing season in October!
Look out for my next article on yachtracing.life as the Olympics draw closer - I didn’t watch much of the Rio Olympics after losing the trials but I am a HUGE fan of the Olympics so I cannot wait to be able to watch some amazing live sport and hopefully see some of my great friends fulfil their dreams and pick up some medals!
H x
