Sailing World Cup

First of all, a huge “THANK YOU” to everyone that showed us their support at our Fundraiser and all those that supported us through donating online and/or donated silent auction items.

We were thrilled with the turn out and super happy that people took home great auction items, got to hear more about our journey – and for our sailing – most importantly – that the fundraiser went well and we can continue with our program towards Canadian Olympic success.

We are also thrilled to be recipients of CAN FUND funding – CAN FUND is a not for profit organization devoted solely to raising funds and awareness of our Canadian athletes.

It’s Nikola’s 4th time receiving funds over her 4 Olympic campaigns and it’s Luke’s first time ever.

This CAN FUND grant allows us to keep coach Ian to keep chasing us in a coach boat in relentless pursuit of perfection.

Thank you CAN FUND and all those Canadians that donate to it: http://www.canadianathletesnow.ca/home/

It’s almost been 3 years since we both finished competing at the 2012 Olympic Games here in Weymouth; Luke in the 470 and Nikola windsurfing on the RSX.

These past weeks, we were back here together as a team for the Sailing World Cup on the Nacra17.

This is the place where the first seed was planted for this campaign… so with Olympic memories flooding back, we were looking to tick some boxes and make it a worthwhile journey back.

We have had some full on conditions for the first two days of the World Cup Regatta.

We struggled to find our boat speed the first few days as we were trying out some different settings.

Unfortunately on the first day of racing Luke experienced a knee injury and we decided to push through the event in spite of this setback which posed some challenges in our manoeuvres.

Needless to say – things weren’t lining up perfectly.

Not a breath of wind on race course during day 3 meant no racing for the Nacra fleet. With big breeze in the forecast on day 4 they made a schedule change to hold 4 races back to back.

We pulled up our socks on the last day of racing, with 4 races in 18-25 knots we put up some better scores and climbed through the rankings to finish 12th just shy of the medal race!

Unfortunately it was not where we wanted to end up but we pushed hard through the week.

Talk about a week of extremes – either pretty windy with big seas or not a speck of breeze.

And… Nikola decided to do a bit of Pan Am Games training on the RSX by competing in the EuroSAF Holland Regatta May 26-30.

Also a week of extremes, Nikola hadn’t sailed in conditions like this in 3 years, was rusty but managed to post some pretty solid results – finishing up 15th overall out of 41.

Mission to get some calluses on her hands for Pan Ams: accomplished!