Winning the Salterns Optimist Trophy and Twitter Chatting with Extreme 40 sailors

Hello everyone. Here is a bit of an update on what I've been doing since coming back from Turkey. 

Firstly Mum and Dad made me have a bit of time off from sailing to recover. It meant I didn't go to the Hayling Island open which was not so good. But the Saturday it was on I didn't wake up until 1030 so they were probably right. Which isn't so good either!! :-) 

A couple of weekends ago I took part in the Royal Lymington Optimist Open Regatta. It was on the same weekend as the Isle of Wight Festival which was really bad timing. We've been to the Festival as a family for the last few years and it is awesome but so is the Lymington Regatta and as it was being used as a training event for the British Team for the Irish Nationals I really wanted to go. It made the weekend quite complicated though. I stayed over at my friend Oliver's house on Friday night so Mum, Dad and Freya could go to the Festival. Dad picked me up early on Saturday morning to take me to Lymington. He looked like he should have had more sleep and less festivaling (ha ha). Then it was blowing well over 20kts and racing was cancelled. There was a time trial instead but before I got to my go that was called off too as it was even windier.

I spent the night with my Grandparents with fish and chips from the chip shop as a treat for tea which was very nice but not as nice as their roast dinners.

Sunday was the complete opposite and hardly any wind. We did get three races in though. It was tough going in the conditions and tide but I was really pleased with the way I sailed. On the first race I didn't manage to work with the tides so well and I got a disappointing 25th. In the next race I had an amazing start and managed to defend my position for the whole race giving me a well-earned 2nd place which I was really pleased at. In the next race I didn't have such a good start but I worked the shifts and managed to finish 9th.

Me with the Salterns Optimist Trophy

Overall I finished 8th out of 94 and as always at Lymington it was a very competitive fleet and at the end of the day I got a bonus as I had won the Salterns Optimist Trophy as the highest place sailor age 10 or under. There's some good names on this cup including Milo- Gill Taylor, Matthew Whitfield, Richard Mason and Vita Heathcote.

As well as Lymington I've been sailing on Friday's cadet night at the Royal Victoria Yacht Club and I've joined Gurnard Sailing Club and been sailing there on Thursday nights in Picos and Fevas. It's been good fun sailing in two handed boats.

As well as having fun on the water I joined in with a @SAPSponsors twitter chat with Jes Gram-Hansen and Rasmus Kostner who sail on the SAP Extreme 40. I asked quite a few questions but my best one was 'Would you like to swap, you can have a go in my Optimist if I can have a go on your Ex40!' I got a reply from Jes & Rasmus '@Haydn_Sewell come to Cardiff you might get lucky!' which is epic. So just got to get dad to take me to Cardiff now!

I got another new North Sails DZero6 this week so I have a new sail for the Nationals and a good spare. Thank you North Sails for your help. It's great getting new sailing stuff.

My next event is the the Warsash Open this weekend which is looking like another light wind one so good for us light weights :-))