Thank you for 2014!

2014 was a brilliant year for me. I went to the European Championships, European team racing Championships, Braassermermeer, Bermuda and lots more! All of these events were a amazing experience for me and I'm very grateful that I could go. So I made a video saying thank you to you all. Here it it is:

It's been an awesome start to this year too. I've already been to Monaco for a team racing event and I'm off to Turkey again next week for the Bodrum International Optimist Regatta which I did in 2013 with the Development team. 

I wouldn't be able to do all this without the help from lots of people so thank you to:

• Crewsaver
• Royal London Yacht Club
• Sail Spy UK
• North Sails
• Nan Nan & G.D
• All my coaches
• My sailing friends
• My family

Thank you! 

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!!.

Warsash Optimist Open and teaching Freya to sail

Well the Warsash Optimist Regatta was hot and slow. It was great to be sailing barefoot, in shorts and a rash vest but it also meant there wasn't very much wind. There were 40 sailors in the main fleet and even in the light winds it was the older and bigger National and Intermediate squad sailors who were at the top of the fleet so it was tough competition.

On the first day we had three races. Two were good for me with an 8th and a 5th. Getting the starts right and finding the best breeze upwind was really important as it was hard to over take once we were reaching or going down wind. In the other race of the day I got a 12th which I was annoyed with myself for at as I should have made better advantage of my light weight in the conditions. 

On Sunday we only managed one race and there was a lot of hanging around. We had two other races which we started but were abandoned mid race. One was abandoned just as we were coming up to the windward mark for the second time when we thought they were going to shorten the course. No one at the front of the fleet was very pleased with that.

Overall I came 8th which was good but I did feel like I could have done better but I did get a plate at the prize giving to add to my collection!

Me teaching Freya to sail

Dad was out on the mark laying rib on Sunday with our friends Richard Ellis and Nigel Smith. They kept having to move the marks because of the light shifty winds only for us not to race. It looked like hard work in the hot sun. Still, it kept them out of trouble or something like that that grown ups say!

I had my GoPro camera from Sailspy on board so got some great footage of my light winds tacking which I have been watching loads since to see where I can make things better.

Last weekend I took Freya out sailing for a bit of practice before she does mini racers at the Nationals. Dad said that Freya looks a more natural sailor than me at the same stage. Hmmmmm. As it was another  hot sunny day me and Dad both helped her to do some capsize practice too. We got Dad to bail out a completely full Opi and he did admit at the end that he hadn't realised it was such hard work!! I think all Opi sailors should get their parents to do this out on the water so they know what it's like.

Freya learning to bail - essential optimist skill

This weekend I'm racing at the Gurnard Sailing Club junior regatta in a Pico with my friend Oliver Evans which will be awesome fun and a great way to spend my 11th birthday.

Bodrum International Regatta - Racing post

Sorry that I haven't told you about my sailing trip to Turkey earlier. As you probably guessed I was very tired. But here it is.

In brief, it was the most awesome experience of my life - great fun, great racing,

amazing to be with so many sailors from so many countries. A great laugh with my GBR team mates and can't wait to do it all again one day. Overall I came 59th out of a fleet of about 300. I was the 5th ranked junior (aged under 12) so a good result as I was one of the youngest there and some of the national teams we were racing against are the teams going to the World Championships

Sailing in Turkey was an incredible experience.  Going to Turkey in itself was amazing never mind the fact that I was there to do the thing I love the most, sailing. It was so hot there. The hottest it reached was a epic 37 degrees however unfortunately I didn't get much of a tan! :( ! At least that meant Mum and Dad were happy as remembering to use sun cream was on the list of Do's I had to take!!!!

The sailing was really awesome, I loved it however I didn't get the best of luck with my charter boat! The charter boat I was given was 16 years old and had a massive hole in the bottom of it. (Thanks coach Matt for getting it sorted though). On the first two days of training we didn't sail due to the wind. On the first day it was 1knt and on the second day it was 40knts. Thankfully though on the third day (day of the practise race) we managed to get a bit of training in.The training was good fun for about an hour then the wind dropped so we had to go back in. After a while of waiting on-shore we eventually went back out on the water with all the other sailors to do a practise race. However the wind dropped to about 2knts so Matt (our Coach) took us out of the race and we headed off shore to find some wind for better training.

Day 1 of racing

Day 1 was a good day of racing for me. The wind was around 9knts which is ideal conditions for me. On the first race I had an amazing start on the pin end and tacked straight away onto the correct shift. After about 3 minutes everybody was on port tack and I was leading the pin end bunch. Unfortunately the people who started at the committee boat side and tacked straight away had more pressure than us. However I gained a bit on the last beat and managed to get a 14th which I was pleased with. However In the next race I had a bad start which resulted in a 36th.

Day 2 of racing

In the first race the average wind was around 6 knots again OK for me. Unfortunately I got a bad start at the committee boat end and had to sail all the way to the right hand side of the course (favoured end) and managed to round the top mark in about 35th. On the run I gained 5 places which I was pleased with. Then on the next beat I gained 7 places by staying on starboard tack for ages and then tacking across on a port shift. I finished in 23 place which I was pleased with. The next race was a much better thanks to my start. I started on the committee end of the start line again and went right leading the pack. After reaching the starboard layline the wind shifted onto starboard tack so I tacked and laid the mark. Unfortunately I lost a few places on the second beat so ended up finishing 12th instead of 9th. The next race was alright, however I started on the wrong end of the startline but gained loads of places on the run and managed to come 17th. So once again another good day for me.

Day 3 of racing

On the first race I sailed really well tacking on all the correct shifts and winning the correct side. After a bad second beat I ended up finishing 17th which I was disappointed with. The next race went a bit better however once again I lost places on the second beat. I ended up finishing 16th. After the end of that race the wind picked up dramatically from 7knts to 22knts in a few seconds! Unfortunately on the last race I didn't do too well as it wasn't my winds. I finished a disappointing 42nd which ended up being my discard.

Overall I came a 59th out of nearly 300 sailors. I was very pleased with that result. I would like to thank Matt and Holly and the rest of my team for making it one of best times of my life.

SailSpy UK Sponsorship

Big Big thanks to SailSpy UK for sponsoring me by giving me a GoPro® Hero 3 Camera and accessories! AWESOME! I was so excited yesterday when we went for the meeting! It all went smoothly and I was handed over a GoPro. I also got a t-shirt and a new Volvo visor from them! 

SailSpy support Nikki Curwen as well who is part of the Artemis Offshore Academy. I met Nikki and she first started sailing in an Optimist also.  It's so cool having the same sponsor.

Me getting my GoPro Hero 3
from Sail Spy UK

The team at SailSpy have kept my rudder so they can build a special bracket to fit a pole out of the end of my boat to put the GoPro on so we can film me from behind the boat. SailSpy's support is going to be a brilliant help for my training as it means I can film myself loads. It also means that you guys get more videos of me sailing! 

I'm off to Turkey on Monday with the British Optimist Development Team for the Bodrum International Regatta so no time to use the new GoPro yet unfortunately but I've set Dad some home work for while I'm away to learn how to use it! I don't think he'll mind!!!!

SailSpy is the leading provider of GoPro® video cameras and specialised accessories to the sailing industry. Based in Cowes, UK, SailSpy is run by a bunch of keen sailors and photographers who are dedicated to promoting sailing to a wider audience.

Here is a link to there website www.sailspy.com