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A SECOND SILVER AT THE EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIPS

The European Championships last month in Tallinn Estonia marked the beginning of the key contest season this year. After a consistent week of racing I broke my championship duck and came away with a silver medal.

The style of racing at the Europeans and Worlds is slightly different to that of the recent World cup events, in that there are no medal races and instead an additional day of qualification before the finals series. This difference slightly changes the style of racing, so the way the Europeans fell in the calendar with the Worlds the key target for the year, they presented a perfect opportunity to sharpen up on the altered style.

The team flew out to meet our poor coaches who had driven the heroic 2500km from Southampton, and in time to get in a couple days good training before racing started. The training turned out to be a really good indication of the conditions to come as we had a couple days racing which were really similar to the training days. This is surprisingly unusual as so often it seems the wind blows from a completely different direction come regatta time.

It was my birthday the day before the regatta started so I on my day off we wandered the beautiful untouched old town which was within the original city walls. It was intriguing to catch a glimpse of the Russian occupation through the architecture, which was in sharp contrast to the austerity of the Olympic harbour where the racing was based from, which was used for the Moscow Olympics.

The regatta was predominantly sailed in a really puffy and shifty offshore wind. Coupled with the fact the course was kept close inshore it made for some really exciting racing with big place and distance changes on each leg. Often the fleet would split to either side and come together at the top in totally different winds – there was a lot of ‘hoping’ that your wind won out!

Despite the unstable conditions I sailed a really consistent qualifying series, which I put predominantly down to some consistent starts. Qualifying ended after two big races in 20+kts with some really fierce bullet gusts. I went into finals 2nd counting 2 6 2 7 3 (8) 8 1 trailing the Croatian Tina Mihelic who was sailing a blinder counting all top 3 finishes.

Unfortunately the first day of finals was abandoned at 7pm after 5 hours on the water, an abandoned race and 5 general recalls – a truly exhausting day, so that put everything on the final day. I sailed a great opener starting with a 1st and then a consistent 14th . For the final race I decided to stay with the boats close to me in the overalls and although we all had a bad race it was enough to defend my silver.

I’m now back in Scotland preparing for the World Championships which are being held in Largs between the 6-14th July. We’ve just completed our big training camp where we mixed in with some of the foreigners to do some racing which was really productive. I’m now having a week off sailing which feels very much like the calm before the storm, our dog is thrilled as I’ve been stomping the hills to keep distracted before going back for the regatta at the end of the week. It’s amazing to have a World Championships in Largs – I can’t wait to get started!

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