What a summer of sailing part 1. European Championships to Gurnard Dinghy Week

Since mid July I've had the most amazing and busy sailing summer spending more time on the water than off it. So sorry for the really long delay in telling you all about it.

First off, it started with the European Championships, which were held in Dun Laoghaire (Ireland) at the Royal St. George Yacht Club. It was a great event with a few ups and downs but I made lots of improvements, learnt a lot and had a great end to the regatta.

It was all very hectic at the start. Most of the team flew over from Southampton with Ella Bennetts mum. I had a bit of a problem as my luggage was a bit over weight so we had to unload some stuff. It all seemed to come down to all the Jaffa cakes Mum had packed in my bag but once we had shared these round the Team I was OK and we were off. When we arrived in Dun Laoghaire we had to wait for Sarah, our house praent to arrive, the rest of the team and our coach, Vagelis, so it turned out to be a no sailing day.

Team GBR at the European Championships

The next two days of training involved a lot of boat sorting out and only some short afternoon training sessions on the water working on rig set up and boat speed but the day after that was a full day sailing. All our training sessions were followed by really long de-brief sessions and talking about the weather much longer than anything I've ever had before. It was so much to take in and understand.

The next part seemed really stressful as our boats had to go through the long and painful measurement process. It was the first time I've seen this.  We had to completely strip our boats down so they could weigh them and every foils and everything was actually measured. Even though you have all the measurement   documents for the boats it's a bit worrying that something might not be right. After all that it was great to get back out on the water sailing. For the next couple of days we had very light winds for training so did some racing with other teams to familiarise ourselves with them. The evening before the event started we had the opening ceremony. I've never seen so many countries  flags all at once with so many sailors from so many nations taking part. It was then an early night to get good long sleep in preparation for race day.

Race day 1 - we started off with a windy day, a complete turn around to all the training days and not what I wanted. The boys fleet (the girls and boys race separately) was split in to 3 groups and I got a 22nd and 43rd which was ok.

Race day 2 - another windy and difficult day for me as one of the smallest and youngest sailors in the event with disappointing results of 41st and 37th which brought a few tears.

Race day 3 - windy again! But I got a 22nd which was ok in the conditions and a 49th. This left me in 121st out 150 and in the bronze fleet at the split. Not where I wanted to be but the standard of competition was so much higher than I had expected.

Race day 4 - a great day. First race in the bronze fleet and I got a 1st I felt good to be leading the fleet. I was very happy.

Race day 5 - another great day.  I got an 8th.

Race day 6- No sailing due to heavy fog :(

Our hotel

Overall it was an brilliant regatta, great experience and I learnt so much. Being with sailors from so many countries was great and we had a lot of fun in Team GBR. Although I would have liked to have done better in the results, my goal for the year was to just go to the European Championships which I did and hopefully I'll go again in the future and be much better with the things I have learnt.

Back home after the Euros I had to go back for the last couple of days of school - boo- before the summer holidays began and loads more sailing.

Me and Oli with our dinghy week trophies

In the first week of the holidays I did Gurnard Dinghy Week, at Gurnard Sailing Club with my friend Oliver Evans in a Pico. It was a great week of sailing , a lot of fun and nice be sailing two handed in between the Euros and British Optimist Nationals.

We were racing in the slow handicap with a fleet of twenty boats including, Fevas, Laser 4.7s and Mirrors. And we did really well. Six races in the series and six wins beating some over the line that gave us  time on handicap so should have been ahead of us. As well as winning the slow handicap, as we discarded a 1st as our worst result, we won  the trophy for the best result overall across all the classes and got a couple of really nice trophies. It was also a good confidence boost for going into the Opi Nationals which I'll talk about in part 2