Optimist Spring Championships

Two weekends ago we had the the first major event of the year, the Optimist Spring Championships in Torquay/Torbay. 

We all went down as a family for this one so it was all of us in a Premier Inn. Friday night was OK. Not too much snoring from Mum and Dad and after a hearty breakfast on Saturday morning we drove down to the Royal Torbay Yacht Club and got rigged and ready for the day. Mum and Freya were on tally board duty so it was quite funny seeing them run around like maniacs trying to hand out 165 tallies to different people!

My results from the first day were a 5th, 23rd and a 6th. The first race went well because I had a good start at the pin and then tacked across the fleet on Port tack. I rounded the winward mark in 10th position. I then gained one place on the reach and another two on the downwind. After a good playing of tactics on the second beat I managed to get to 5th position and then hold my position until the finish line to come 5th. 

However, in the next race due to poor tactics I got a 23rd which ended up being my discard. With a 6th in the third race of the day I was in 12th position overall overnight  which was good and meant I was in Gold fleet for the next day. 

It was a really tricky first day as the waves were massive. When we were at the bottom of a wave there wasn't much wind and I couldn't see the boats around and then you would go to the top and get the breeze and view. At the start of the second race one of the waves broke right on top of me at the start filling up my boat which didn't help. At least I wasn't affected by the swell unlike a lot of sailors who ended up being sick. Yuck!

Saturday night we had a a really nice dinner with the Ellis's and the Atherton's before an earlyish night to conserve our energy for the next day. After another Premier Inn breakfast we headed  down to the Sailing club for the the second day of racing racing. The wind on Sunday was quite light but still with a decent swell from Saturday which was very annoying. As it was mothers day,  Mum had a treat which was a day on the Mothership which is basically a toilet boat! But it did turn out to be a lush yacht!  Quote from Mum ..."yes, but I did help about 50 children go to the toilet!"

My results on Sunday were 5th, 13th and 19th and I finished 14th overall which was a good result but I was a bit disappointed as I came 9th in the Springs last year. The overall winner was my friend from the National Squad, William Heathcote and sailed really well.

Last weekend we had a joint National, Intermediate and Development Squad weekend at Weymouth. It was really windy so quite tough. The racing we did definitely favoured the older bigger sailor but I didn't capsize and could keep pace with the fleet and got some mid fleet results. I was really pleased with this as a year ago in the same sort of conditions at Weymouth just staying upright and getting round a course was tricky so I've made some great progress.

Next up in is the Easter Regatta at Braassermeer. It's a really big international event so I'm really looking forward to it. I'll also be using my new North Sails V4 which I tested out this weekend and it seems to be really fast and point high.

My new North Sails V4

Something different : TEAM RACING!

Last weekend I was at Bowmoor Sailing Club for the new IOCA Random Pairs Team Racing Championships. It was the second time I had ever team raced.  The first time I was in a Feva for the RYA Team Racing Championships so this was the first time I had ever properly team raced in my Optimist.  I was really excited but also quite nervous. To add to my nerves, I wasn't very well over the weekend with a cold and a bad cough. 

It was a two day event and on Saturday the wind conditions were 8-12 knots gusting 14, so perfect for team racing. The weekend was based on random pairs. This is how it worked: 

There were 24 sailors in total. 12 more experienced sailors had a number and 12 less experienced had a letter. In each race a random number and letter were put together to race as a team and in each race we had a different pairing.  All sailors had 22 races and the winner was the sailor who won the most number of team races. 

On Saturday I lost my first race, then won two and lost the fourth. By this time though I really felt like I was started to get to grips with how to race as a team and help my less experienced sailors. I then won 5 races in a row, lost one to Julia Mellers (who was sailing really well) and another to be on 7 wins and 4 losses. But I won all of my next races to end the first day in joint second place with 11 wins and 4 losses. 

My favourite race was round 11. In this race I was with Freya Black versus Ellen Main and James Hall. The more experienced sailor was Ellen Main on the other team so I was targeting her. On the start line I managed to force Ellen to the pin which was my plan however Freya was over so she had to go back which mean't she was 4th.  The team with the sailor who finished 4th lost the race so I had to do something.  I forced Ellen out on starboard from the start almost to the edge of the lake so that she couldn't tack whilst Freya beat James and rounded the the first windward mark in 1st place. I rounded it in 3rd with Ellen snapping on my heels. I managed to pull away from Ellen on the next three legs however James was waiting to try and block me for the final upwind leg. The second I rounded the last mark James tacked on top of me so we got into a tacking duel and Ellen got past me and I was now in last place. I decided I had to out tack James to get back in to 3rd place. I did five really quick tack, a short pause, two quick tacks and a fake tack and I had gained half a boat length. However, me and James were coming in on port and Ellen was coming in on starboard and Freya was above us all waiting nervously. I got as close as I could to Ellen then said tack and tacked before James knew what was happening and I gained a half a boat length finished second with Freya finishing 1st. What a great victory. 

Over Saturday night my cold got a lot worse and I felt really rubbish on Sunday but at least I had my new Crewsaver Phase2 drysuit keeping me warm and dry. It was really windy averaging about 20 knots with loads of huge gusts. I was really struggling to just sail and keep the boat upright and felt like I had no energy so concentrating on the team racing tactics was really hard. I only won one more race on Sunday and had a capsize and a couple of nose dives. In the end I missed the last race as I couldn't keep going and didn't feel like it was very safe.  

In the end I finished in 7th place overall just missing out on a top six prize.  The day finished early at 12:30pm.  Although I was annoyed at not doing so well on Sunday I still had a brilliant time and learnt a lot from the weekend which was good and very useful but now I don't know which I prefer Team Racing or Fleet Racing!

Crewsaver Phase2 kit photo shoot!

Two weeks ago, despite the very windy weather, I was down at Warsash Sailing Club for a photo shoot for the awesome new Crewsaver Phase2 kit. The kit is the best I have ever had! It was really warm but also really easy to move in. 

At the shoot there were also two lads in a 420, two Enterprise sailors, an RS800 team and a couple in their RS200 and me in my Optimist. As well as the sailors there were the Crewsaver marketing team,  Greg and Hannah, looking after us and the professional photographer Paul. 

It was really windy in the morning so we couldn't go sailing so me and another man did some pretend coaching shots together onshore while we waited and hoped the wind would die down. After a long wait we were eventually given the go ahead and we rigged and got ready to launch. However just as we were about to launch the wind came through really strongly again and even with my rig on the floor and me standing on the mast it was still trying to take off so it was de-rig and time to wait again. 

We knew it was going to be a long wait so the manager ordered baguettes for everyone and we had lunch. We then took a team photo and got ready to launch. 

I was first to launch and it was still really windy. I have to admit I was a bit anxious going out at first. Just getting offshore into the wind was pretty tricky. They told me to reach up and down really fast. It was so fun and I put in some really solid runs! The wind was averaging 30 knots so I was planing really fast. As well as dealing with the wind and staying upright I also had to try and remember to smile which was a bit difficult with so much spray going everywhere. As you'll see in the photos I didn't manage it for all of them! The sailors on shore were really impressed with my sailing because I was the first one to go out was going really fast and didn't capsize. 

The photographer was brilliant and got some amazing shots. Overall it was an awesome day. Dad said I looked really scary on some of the pictures and that I should make the same face on the startline!  You can find also the pictures on my Haydn Sewell Sailing Facebook page and on the Crewsaver Facebook page

Below are some of the pictures from the weekend.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you for an awesome 2013 sailing year

Sorry this post is a bit late but we had a catastrophic failure of our PC at home (now sorted).

2013 was a brilliant year for sailing for me. I started the year in the South Zone Squad. I went to Turkey with the British Development Team for the Bodrum International Regatta. I was in Team GBR for the Irish Nationals, competed in all the the major British events and finished the year ranked 11th in the British rolling ranking. Over the winter I have been training in the National Squad. I've raced and trained loads and had so much fun.

I couldn't have done this with out a lot of support and help from so many people. So I would like to say a very big thank you to (in no special order)

• The Royal London Yacht Club Youth Trust
• Crewsaver
• Wightlink
• SailSpyUK
• North Sails
• My Grandparents - Nan Nan & GD and Nanny
• All the coaches who have helped me especially Clare, Tom and Alan
• Parents of my friends who have helped me especially Cordelia and Richard Ellis and Chris Evans
• All my sailing friends (some of who are in the video)
• IOCA UK
• Royal Victoria Yacht Club
• RYA
• My family in Dublin
• and last but not least Mum, Dad and Freya

Thank you everyone. I can't wait for this year's racing to start!

I hope you enjoy the video.

Great end to the Sailing Season

I've been a bit slow to get this post out but I've had a couple of busy weekends recently to finish off this year's sailing with the Optimist Winter Championships and National Squad Training.

The Winter Championships were at Datchet making two weekends in a row there (I had been at a Boys invitational training the week before). 151 sailors took part so we were split into four flights with two groups racing at once in a race.

Check out the Crewsaver winter gloves

The Saturday was the first cold sailing day I've had this winter so it was full on with my Crewsaver thermals and dry suit. I also had some new boots and Crewsaver winter gloves. The gloves are awesome and definitely the warmest I ever had.

We had three races on Saturday all in very light winds which were very shifty. That's OK as long as you are in the right part of the course and getting the shifts right. The only problem was I didn't seem to be and think I spent to much time tacking to try and stay with the shifts. At the end of Saturday I had a 11th, 14th and 18th which are OK results but meant I was in 33rd place overall which I was really unhappy about. It still meant that I was in the gold fleet for the Sunday. 

After Saturday night in the Holiday Inn in Slough, fish and chips from a very strange Indian/pizza/burger/kebab/fish & chip take away and watching the 50th anniversary of Dr. Who (which I didn't get as I've never watched it before) I was ready to go out and do much better.

Top Optimist GoPro accessory
ready for action

Sunday was light winds again but I had a much better day of getting them right. In the first race I cleared all the negative thoughts out of my head and managed to get a second however I was a bit angry at myself because I let 1st place slip at the Windward mark. However in the second race I had a shocker- a 21st!! But I managed to regain confidence and get a 5th in the next race.

Overall I finished 9th which was a great result and my second best this year so I was happy with that.

The following weekend we had a three day National Squad training camp at Farmoor Reservoir. We had a real mix of wind conditions from gusting over 20kts to no wind at all so got some brilliant training done. I had my new GoPro pole on my tiller that SailSpy UK gave me (thank you) so was able to get some great video from behind me which you can watch here.

During the training we did some Team racing which I really enjoyed and some fleet racing which I came second overall in.

So that's sailing done for this year. I wonder if Santa will bring me any sailing presents for Christmas?!

National Squad 2013/14

Training, training and blindfolded sailing

Since my last event, the End of Seasons Championships, my sailing has been all training. 

To start with it was my first ever National Squad training camp. This was four days at the Weymouth and Portland Sailing Academy. I was so excited. Getting into the National Squad was my aim for the season so it was brilliant to be part of it. 

The first day was a land day for sailors and parents. There were sailors there from the Optimist, Laser, Techno and Toppers squads.   So there were quite a lot of us and a real mix of ages. I was one of the youngest with the others up to age 15. For most of the day we were having fitness tests. I thought I did quite well  especially against the older ones but I still ended up being told I needed to be fitter!

I'm not to sure what the parents did all day. I think they were told about what we would be doing and how they could be 'Performance Parents' to support us! Once we get to the National Squad it also seems that parents lose their own names as the name badges they were given to wear at the start of the day just said 'Parent of.... Haydn'

For the Camp we were staying at a PGL place just outside Weymouth which was OK. Sharing a room with four others was really fun. 

Unfortunately, the Camp was at the same time as the big storm that came through. I think it was the windiest weather I've ever been in. We had to store our Optimist in doors to stop them blowing away and when we went up onto Chessil Beach I could barely stand up.

Because of the weather we had to do two shore based days working on goal setting, boat set up, tactics and strategy. While I would rather have been sailing this was all really helpful stuff. 

On Tuesday, the last day of the Camp we did go sailing and it was still pretty windy with big waves. Even the older sailors were hiking so for me it was really full on. I learnt loads about windy weather techniques that are best for someone my size and our coaches, Alan Williams, Tom Haynes, Vagelis Atzemian and Kate Williams are awesome.

Alan made a video of the Camp which you can see here.http://vimeo.com/78775120

Last weekend I was at the IOCA Boys Invitational training at Queen Mary Reservoir In Datchet. This was another very light wind training session but really useful.  As we have the Winter Championships there this weekend it was good to get used to the distraction of the planes from Heathrow airport which are so amazingly close. We did loads of tacking practice, worked on our starting, boat handling techniques and fell for the boat

One of the exercises we had to do was sailing blind folded (or for me wearing a large hat over my eyes) to see how much feel we had for the boat. I had my SailSpy GoPro camera on at the time so you can see how I got on here. 

This weekend it's the Winter Championships, which is the last event of the year. The results from this and the End of Seasons are used to decided who gets selected for Team GBR for the Irish Nationals so it's important to have a good one.

The forecast is looking good at the moment but does look like its going to be cold so all my Crewsaver thermals and dry suit will get a real testing. Then the weekend after that it's a three day National Squad Training Camp at Farmoor Reservoir in Oxford. So not only do I get three days sailing with my friends but I get a day off school for sailing to. Result!!.

Four weekends of great sailing

I've had a really busy time since my last blog post with four weekends in a row of sailing which has mostly been amazing. To summarise it's been:

• The RYA South Zone Championships - 15th
• Boys invitational training - one of the best training events ever
• Volvo Gill End of Season Championship - 28th
• Volvo Gill End of Season Championship - our team came 3rd

RYA South Zone Championships

These were in Poole and it seems like quite a long time ago now. There were quite a lot of the good sailors from our zone there and we had 80 boats in the fleet in total. As I wasn't going for the zone squads this year it meant I could use the event for practising techniques rather than having to worry about the result so much. Still once I'm racing I always want to do as well as possible and win. I had on OK event but not quite as good as I would have liked. I finished in 15th place overall which I was a bit disappointed with however in the same event last year I finished 21st so it's still an improvement

Boys invitational training

This was at Burghfield Sailng Club with the national squad coach, Alan Williams. He is awesome. It was some of the best coaching sessions I've ever had. For the whole weekend there was hardly any wind but it didn't really matter as we still got loads of sailing in and were able practice techniques loads and as it wasn't windy it was really easy to hear what the coaches were saying. I really learnt a lot more about my tacking and boat handling. During the training we did a series of races which I won and was given one of Alan's sailing belts as a prize, which as he said will fit me one day!!

End of Season Championships

This was the first time I've done the End of Seasons where the result counts towards the rankings and getting into the squads so I was a bit nervous and scared of mucking it up. 

Waiting to launch at the End Of Seasons

There were over 200 sailors taking part and we were in four flights with two flights to each race so over 100 boats on the start line. 

 On Saturday while we were rigging it was quite windy but as soon as we launched the wind disappeared and we had a long wait to start racing and had to completely change the set up of the boat on the water. Hanging around for ages isn't too bad as I like talking to my friends out on the water. We had two races on Saturday in really light shifty winds and I got a 9th and 23rd. 

On Sunday morning it was really windy but we went off early to get four races in. The first race was epic, loads of people capsizing and really fast reaching. I came 37th which was OK in the conditions. The wind was a bit up and down after that.  I had two good races and two with pretty bad starts. In the last race I was one of the last to cross the line but was able to sail though the fleet to finish 27th so I was pleased with my boat speed and tactics so just need to practice my starts over winter training. With a 9th and 10th in the other races overall I finished 28th.

National Squad

So what does this mean to the rolling rankings? I am now ranked 11th of all the optimist sailors and means I've been selected for the National Squad. The squad is made up of the top 6 girls top 6 boys, the next 10 sailors and two discretionary places. Being in the National squad is awesome and it was my aim for the year so I am very very happy.

RYA Eric Twiname Team Racing Championship

Me and Max

This was epic, 10/10 on the awesometer. I've never really done any team racing before apart from a little bit in Optimist training and this was in RS Fevas so sailing really competitively in a two handed boat as crew was quite new for me too. 

I was part of Team Heathcote (a Royal Lymington YC team) with Robbie and Alex King, Max Moyles, Vita and William Heathcote. I was crewing for Max who now sails a 420. He's a brilliant helm and really good at the rules and boat handling. I learnt loads from him over the weekend. 

The racing was over two days. On Saturday we won all our races but one which was brilliant. On Sunday it was quite windy which made it tricky for us as quite a light weight team. We lost the first couple of races but won the next four which put us into the gold fleet in third place. We then went into the quarter finals which we were winning but a massive storm came through and it became more of a team survival than team racing. The racing was abandoned for the day but the sailing in the Fevas when it was really windy was so much fun. I have never gone so fast in a dinghy on a reach before. It was all a bit chaotic trying to get back ashore though. 

Team Heathcote waiting to race

With racing abandoned we kept our third place and got presented with an engraved glass at prize giving so another one for my collection.

As I've been sailing on the mainland so much lately we having been staying at my grandparents lots, so a big shout out to them for looking after us and the lovely dinners.

Next up is the first National Squad training camp which is a four day residential in Weymouth. I can't wait.