We had a great week of sailing in Miami with some of the best winds I have ever sailed in at the Miami OCR. I finished 7th overall, meeting my goal of a top 10 finish and securing my spot on the Canadian Sailing Team. Full results here.
I didn't have a great start to the event, sitting in 16th after three days of qualifying races. This event saw a new scoring format where we carried our ranking into the final series as one race, effectively putting a much larger weighting on the final series.
The first day of finals racing saw some tricky conditions where I was a bit inconsistent. In the first race I made a big gain on the first run, only to get stuck in a big hole on the next beat to drop down to 16th. In the next race I was first to the weather mark and had a tight battle with Evert McLaughlin (CAN) and Jesper Stalheim (SWE) to take a race win. In the last race of the day I had a good first beat, but bled boats throughout the race to finish 17.
Video of race 2:
Going in to the final day of racing I was in 12th, only a few points out of the top 10 who would advance to the medal races on Saturday. I knew I had to put in two top 8 results to have a chance at being in the medal races. In the first race I had a great start and played the first beat well to round 2nd and was able to hold on to 3rd at the finish. In the second race of the day and final race of the series I had a terrible start but was able to battle back to the top 15 at the first mark and made gains throughout to cross the line in 6th, moving me up to 5th overall and putting me in the medal races.
The medal races also saw a new format, with the top 10 sailors racing three races as opposed to the usual one race. This was a great learning experience for me, giving me plenty of medal race practice. I had a decent day, posting an 8,5,4 but I was unable to stay ahead of the right guys in the last race and dropped to 7th overall.
It was a great week of sailing for me and I was very happy with meeting my goal of being in the top 10 and securing my spot on the Canadian Sailing Team for next year.
I am in Florida another month training and competing. Next up is the Lauderdale OCR, February 8-10.
