Arriving in Amsterdam on the 17th in the morning gave us all day to go to the storage facility where our boat was being kept – our newly acquired used boat!
Then the assembling began. Hours upon hours of boat work. Luke is a boat work champion, and thanks to him, I was able to catch up on some much needed sleep that I didn’t get on my overnight flight to Amsterdam.
Luke had organized a new trailer for our boat – and so once we got the boat and trailer sorted, we started our drive to Kiel in northern Germany.
Our real adventure began around 11pm while I was driving and Luke was asleep. The GPS said only 130kms to go, the gas gauge said 170kms till empty. So – I kept my eyes peeled for a petrol station, which are normally everywhere along the highways.
With no signs and watching the fuel drop… we had 30km left, then 20, then 13 and then the gauge dropped to 0. I was still driving, no gas station insight.
Then, at our exit, there was one, an unmarked and closed at midnight station. Luckily, they had an automatic night pump.
Thanks to Luke, our boat, trailer and car set up in Europe went very smoothly. Our trailer opens with our boat on it… how absolutely awesome is that.
Not only that, but Luke keeps our boat in tip-top order – plenty of the Europeans were checking out our boat… one Italian even said, “I thought that I had thought of everything, but you got me on this one – that is so cool”. Definitely lucky to have a skipper that’s as good off the water with the boat work as he is on the water!
For the start of the regatta, of course, the typical northern Germany regatta weather came: cold, rainy and windy. That’s when the Rodeo started.
Day 1 had us break our tiller extension and our spinnaker pole in race 1 and thus we had to pull out of the two following races. Lucky for me, I hit the spinnaker pole with my lifejacket on… never thought that a few inches of padding would be so useful. I was fine, the spinnaker pole… not so much, it was bent in half.
Day 2 started much better for us. Still the same wind conditions let us have another go at it. Race 1 went without any craziness.
Race 2 went a bit sideways though… just before the finish we took a major spill that shot me through the “cheese grater” as they term it… hitting a few things along the way. We called it a day after that.
The rest of the regatta wasn’t quite so windy but quite testing for us in our starts and racing. Our highlight was a 4th place finish. Finishing 18th overall wasn’t what we had in mind, but it was an invaluable experience for us.
Having not sailed a regatta since January, and that only against 6 other boats, it was a completely different story with 27 other boats on the line in taxing conditions. We take so much experience with us to Holland for our next training camp July 1-5th, and then onwards to our World Championships July 21-27 in Holland.
We would like to thank Malte Philip, a German coach whom we hired for the regatta for his support and all around awesomeness.
We had met Malte last year when he was part of the Canadian Olympic Sailing Team coaching staff. It was great to see him again and to learn from him, and it gave me the opportunity to improve my German, while Luke picked up more words each day!
Luke is in Holland for a few days break, while I’m visiting with my sister in Quedlinburg, Germany – a UNESCO World Heritage
Site that was first mentioned in records back in1922. It has unbelievable character and is such a charming town, boasting 1200 half-timbre houses that survived the Second World War and the Communist regime.
