segellena

On day 4 little wind was forecasted in the morning. A building breeze was predicted to come in the afternoon and the cut off time for the last start of the day was at 3.30pm to allow for people to go home at a reasonable time. A bad enough forecast for us to hope that there was not gonna be any races and that we could hold on to 2nd place? After all, once we would complete one more race the second discard would come into play and push us right back into third place and our Argentinian competitors back in contention for our podium spot. But It’s no fun wining the waiting game. Plus I’ve had so much fun racing over the last week and did not come all the way to San Francisco just to sit onshore. 

In the end we did two more races in 6-12kts, the lightest breeze of the regatta. Those were not exactly the conditions that suited our Cirrus R2 and we were lacking boat speed. Our Argentinian friends on the contrary were on fire and won the first race of the day.

After that we were running the numbers and there were two options: Beat the Argentinians by 3 points (which was going to be hard with less boat speed on a one way street type race course) or force our competitors over the line to put a start penalty on them or make them have a bad start. They already had a DNF and a DNC and could not afford another bad race. We tried the latter by parking our boat right to leeward of them with the plan to block them from crossing the line on time.

It did not work out, the Argentinians sailed a good race and showed that they deserved that third podium spot. We did win the Mixed team division but it was a bit of a bittersweet ending for us finishing in 4th after being in the podium ranks all week. 

Nevertheless it was a great event and a great time on the water with great people and close racing. I learned invaluable lessons which I’m sure will come in handy when finally stepping back on the Eve with Ravi – it’s been too long! 

The regatta organisation by RYC, USF18 class president Steve Stroebel & the race committee around Becky Ashburn were excellent. It’s been a while since I had so much fun crewing the 4th race of the day in a 4 day regatta where it blew >15kts every day. 😉

Once again the F18 class has proved itself as a fun and exciting boat to race which is also thanks to the many diverse sailors, newcomers and legends alike, who make everyone feel welcome and treat each other with respect and camaraderie. Thank you David, for organizing the boat and setting everything up while I was busy with work in Germany.

Thank you also to the Froeb family for hosting me, and to the Skiff Sailing Foundation for letting us use their Cirrus R2. I hope you will find a happy buyer for this rocket soon! And a big thanks of course to Ravi who always supports me on and off the water and introduced me to all these great people!

Monday was a rest day but we had no time off, working away on the boat and replacing some more lines and fittings. Especially up the rig we found some issues that turned into an afternoon-consuming project and overwrote the sailing session we had planned. But there was no wind anyways so it was okay.  In the evening there was an opening ceremony with nice food and a good speech from class president Steve Stroebel introducing all the different teams from the different parts of the US, Canada, Argentina, and Chile. We also had a good amount of Youth sailors and 4 female sailors (including myself) but of course there is always room for more!

On the first race day the Bay kept what was promised: Wicked breeze with 11-28kts and nasty chop that saw our closest competitors, the Argentinians, break their spinnaker pole in the first race. Lots of people went swimming that day and got to check whether their hulls needed any polishing but the only boat that really needed polishing was probably ours. Well, as a German saying goes: What I don’t know doesn’t make me hot (I promise it makes more sense in German!). So we never really looked at the underside of our boat neither ashore or on the water meaning we made it through the day without any capsizes or losing crew members. Overall we sailed well, with good speed, fighting for every spot and sending it on the downwind legs. 

However, we did sail with a small handicap: On every downwind leg our jibsheet got sucked into our spinnaker block and wrapped multiple times around its sheave which made it very hard to trim the spinnaker and even more difficult to ease the jib. In fact the more we trimmed the spinnaker the tighter the jib got – beyond the point where you would ever trim a jib (even on the upwind). There was not much we could do to prevent it from happening while being on the water so we knew we had some boatwork to do that afternoon. But at least as the races went on we figured out more efficient ways to deal with it. David would go to leeward to fix the issue while I would steer the boat with one hand and hold the kite sheet with my other hand while standing in the footstrap at the back of the boat hanging off the trapeze wire. While I did enjoy the tiller time, for sure that mode was not as fast as normal F18 downwind mode and it definitely did cost us a race win in the third race.

During that third race the famous San Francisco fog rolled in from the bridge and into the left side of the race course. Apparently to the point where you could not see the top mark anymore but that did not concern us. We tacked out as soon as we saw the fog and approached the top mark from the right. In the end 10 boats abandoned the 3rd race so even though there were 4 races planned the race committee made the right call and sent us in.

On day 2 the wind was initially a little more gentle, but again built throughout the day (as most days in San Francisco). We did another 4 solid races and honestly I don’t remember much from that day which is probably because a lot has happened since then and also I was just enjoying it very much! Somehow I did not think about the 4 races that laid ahead (and what that would mean for my poor forearm muscles) but focused on one race, one lap, one leg, one gust, one wave at a time. 

Day 3 started slightly suboptimal. Being constantly on the road, working from the weirdest places, and being full on for quite some time with two new jobs, it sometimes takes its toll. So that morning I had a little mental meltdown (it was also THAT time of the month for me). Poor Ravi had to deal with that but as always was the best supporting partner I could wish for. Anyway, during the ride to Richmond Yacht Club I had a bit of time to get over it and my mindset back on track.

So when it was time to race we were able to pull off some more solid results while the guys in 2nd place had some issues with their boat. This forced them to abandon two of the 4 races which put us ahead of them in the overall rankings. It was a marginal lead only upheld by their two DNCs which by the way was also the case with the Argentinians in 4th. These guys  would be only 3 points behind us once the second discard would come into play. The regatta allowed for 2 discards which means your worst score gets deleted after 4 races and your second worst score gets deleted after 12. Since we sailed very consistently throughout the whole regatta (our worst result was a 7th) we had all to play for and could take a little more risk going into the last day of racing compared to the guys behind us. 

Check out part 3 tomorrow!

Before I head into my next F18 adventure (stay tuned) I thought it would be nice to tell you about my last one. 🙂

In the last week of September, I had the pleasure to participate in the F18 America Championship 2024 with David Liebenberg. The venue was the stunning San Francisco Bay which promised nasty chop and wicked breeze (or at least that’s what the event stickers said). The regatta was organised by David’s home club, the Richmond Yacht Club. Ahead of the Americas Championship Richmond Yacht Club also organided the RYC Multihull Invitational Regatta – a great opportunity for us to get to know the venue – and to learn the boat and each other.

This was the first time ever that we had sailed together and the first time ever either of us had sailed on a Cirrus R2 F18. Ahead of the week David and one of his friends did a tremendous job of getting the boat measured and replaced nearly half the lines and fittings on the boat to make it “San Francisco proof”. It’s not like I didn’t want to help, but I was busy with a Teambuilding Event with Janssen & Team in the greater Hamburg area.

Saturday afternoon was the earliest I could be in San Francisco – too late for the long distance race of the RYC Multihull Invitational Regatta. But on Sunday we went out and did 3 races in some 11-18kts of wicked breeze and nasty chop and the Cirrus R2 proved pretty reliable, especially downwind. David and I also did a pretty good job. It definetily helped that he just raced at the Olympics in Paris, that this regatta was his home venue and that I had just completed 4 days of training in the San Francisco Bay 5 weeks before – and of course that we are two badass sailors! 😉

With our results in those three races we did enough to discard the DNC from the long distance race on Saturday and actually made it into 4th place! Not too bad for only sailing half the regatta.

Stay tuned for part 2 coming tomorrow!

Race day 4 was the first day of final racing and due to not finishing 3 races in the big breeze we were starting in Silver fleet. It was not what we came here for or what we showed we were able to do in the training but simply the result of 3 days of really windy and on the edge conditions. Finally the wind was a bit more manageable though and we finished the first race in 5th. The second race was also looking really good until we broke our tackline inside the spinnaker pole on the second downwind and had to finish the race without the spinnaker. The result was a 42nd place finish that should have been a Top Ten finish. We rushed back to the beach and gathered all the tools that we needed to repair the tackline. Unfortunately we did not manage to fix the tackline in time to start the fourth race but it was a good experience to learn and deal with breakage during an event like the World Championship. 

On the last day it was very windy again! By the time we reached the top mark bearing away had become very difficult yet again and we saw boats capsize left and right. But we took our time and bore away safely and then tried a new safety mode that Lars and Olin had told us about a couple of days earlier – sailing downwind with the spinnaker up but the crew sitting on the boat rather than being on the trapeze. That way I was able to play the spinnaker to help prevent pitchpoling. We finished the race in 22nd as one of the last teams who finished that race.

For the second race the breeze and waves continued to build and we finally felt the fatigue from one of the windiest regattas that I had done in a long time and not wanting to risk injury or damage to the boat due to fatigue we decided not to race the last race.

Racing as an all female team at the F18 World Championship taught us invaluable lessons in leadership, racing and managing our own sailing program. We came out as more confident and more experienced sailors – certainly in the windy stuff! And we hope that by being the first all female team that took part in an F18 World Championship in at least a decade we were able to inspire our fellow female sailors to believe in themselves and that they too can take part in big events like this with and all female team. 

As a bonus we were awarded a gold medal for the „Women Title“ – my first title at a Sailing World Championship!

I would like to thank the US Sailing Foundation for supporting this project financially, as well as Nacra Sailing for supplying us with a boat and Ravi for being a coach and mentor through the whole process. Finally, I would like to thank the sailors of the F18 class for giving us a warm welcome into the class. I am very much looking forward to the next adventures that the F18 class holds for us! 

In the meantime, Ravi recovered well from his surgery and should be back on the boat soon. I cannot wait to hop on an F18 again together with him and start training for the next F18 Worlds in the Netherlands. For us it will be kind of a home event since our partner Nacra Sailing is based there. We are aiming to take the overall win this year which would mean that I’d become the first woman to ever win the F18 World Championship. I’f you are interested in supporting us on this journey we are currently looking for Sponsors. So feel free to reach out to me via my Email address or on LinkedIn!

After Ravi tore his meniscus we had to find a new skipper for the World Championship. With Cam Farrah we found an experienced Catamaran sailor and we would also be the only women’s team at the event. In order to ensure the maximum preparation time possible I arrived early in Europe to pick up the F18 from Nacra Sailing that we had been using over the season and drive it to Costa Brava. During the drive I had company from Henry Lee, Ravi’s F18 crew from last year’s World. Once we got to Costa Brava we rigged everything together and went for a quick shakedown sail so that when Cam arrived in Barcelona on June 25th we were able to sail the same afternoon. 

During the 4 training days we practiced Accellerations, Tacks and Gybes and Bear Aways, as well as speed with another American Team, Lars and Olin Guck and our French Team Nacra training partners Cedric Bader and Yves Peters. We always looked good in the line ups, even in 12-15kts and with us being generally lighter than our training partners.

Measurement went smoothly thanks to Ravi’s and Steve Strobel’s help in teaching us how to set up the boat. We weighed in 4 kgs under the minimum crew weight. Normally we’d have to carry half of this amount in crew corrector weight but since the boat weighed in 3kg over the minimum weight we were able to offset and not carry any corrector weight. On June 30th we took part in the practice race to again make the most out of the preparation time we had and get our first racing experience together.

Racing started July 1st at 1pm. We sailed one race in a medium offshore breeze and finished 26th. Then followed a long period of waiting in no wind until the mighty Tramuntana winds filled in again as an offshore breeze. Very quickly it got very windy and we ended up racing in 30kts. Half the boats in both fleets did not finish this race and many capsized and broke equipment. We also had our first capsize as a team but managed to righten the boat and finish the race with only the main and the jib.

On race day 2 the race committee was more cautious about the Tramuntana winds and decided to only let one fleet at a time race. Our fleet raced second. We did 3 race attempts in very light conditions which were all abandoned. Then finally the Tramuntana filled in again and we sailed another race in +30kts. Again, only half the fleet finished the race. We raced until the 2nd top mark. However, this time we did not make the bear away and capsized in a weird way that saw us getting dragged behind the boat for at least 15minutes until rescue boats arrived to help us turn the boat into the wind. 

On race day 3 one race was completed in an offshore morning breeze. We had a great start and after tacking over we were leading the race. Soon though some of the heavier teams who were able to sail a higher mode passed us. After a few strategic and tactical mistakes on the second upwind we finished the race in 27th. The race committee tried to start a second race but soon had to abandon it due to no wind. We were sent back to the beach soon after where we waited for the Seabreeze to settle in. An hour later AP went down and Delta flag went up again. We started the next race in windy conditions – again. At the top mark we realized that bearing away would be just as hard as yesterday. We were not ready to go through that experience again after what happened yesterday so we decided to head in. 

The last thing I posted here on the blog about my small boat sailing was Kiel Week 2023 in the Nacra 17. After that, Anton and I determined that we did not want to continue sailing together and I took some time off with my mum to reflect and figure out what I wanted to do next. My mum and I did a little cruise with her boat which was an interesting experience for me since the top speed of her boat is only 3kts. It was literally what we call „Entschleunigung“ in German, or simply „slowing down“ in English.

On this trip I met Ravi Parent who became famous in 2019 for this video of a spectacular crash in the Nacra 17 and who is the only sailor to win the F18 Europeans, F18 World Championship and A-Class World Championship all in the same year. Luckily I had also recently pulled a stunt like that on the Nacra 17 so I was able to impress him a little too (You can find the video here). 😉 And if you have followed Ravi’s or my Instagram lately you will have found that we don’t only spend as much time together as possible, but are also sailing the F18 as a mixed team. If we had the same nationality we’d consider doing an Olympic campaign in the Nacra 17 together.

Sailing the F18 has definitely been a steep learning curve for me and sailing as a couple is an even steeper learning curve for both of us. We spent the Winter in Ravi’s home venue Sarasota, sailing 4 days a week and even ran a little training Camp with his F18 friends. In May we took part in the French Nationals which wasn’t a success for us but a big first measurement of where we stand as a team.

And yes, we are just like any other couple, so of course there were some conflicts on the water… Sailing with your boyfriend is certainly not easy – even when you’re not in love, sailing in a mixed team is certainly a challenge. But when you push through the arguments and find a solution together it is also one of the most rewarding things I have ever done in my life.

I have recently learned that there are not many (if any!) sports where men and women compete together and are literally in the same boat. So I have gained a lot of respect for myself, Ravi, and all the other Mixed teams in the Nacra 17 and the F18 that battle it out together on the race course. Sailing might just be the perfect activity to promote and facilitate diversity in any team.

But back to my journey. After the French Nationals we did a week of training in Valencia with the aim to compete in the Spanish Nationals at the end. Conditions were great and the hospitality of the Spanish Catamaran sailors was outstanding. We had some good sessions with Lucas Gonzales Smith and his crew and finished off the training week with a 4 boat training session on the day before the regatta. It was quite a wavy day – classic for Valencia – but only 10-15kts. As a lighter team we are naturally not as fast as the heavier teams but we were still able to keep up with them that day. With the regatta starting the next day we kept the session at under 2hrs.

When we were back at the ramp I hopped off the boat and held it steady and Ravi was pulling up the rudders and pull out the daggerboards. Suddenly I saw him laying on the boat in pain and it was quickly obvious that he wasn’t going to be able to get off the boat without help. Beto, one of the Spanish sailors drove him to a nearby hospital while I derigged the boat. Over the next few days we had two more hospital visits and instead of racing we learned that Ravi’s meniscus was torn. It was clear that he was not going to be able to compete at the F18 World Championship with me anymore…

Historically this boat and this team love Scarlino. It was good to be back in a venue where the boat had nothing but success in the past.

Honestly, looking ahead at the weather forecast for the week I was worried. There was decent breeze predicted for the training days but nothing from day one of the racing all the way through until the last day.  The training days turned out to be beautiful sailing days with sunny conditions and perfect breeze with flat water which made for great practice races. These boats love a good breeze without waves! And we had practice races every day. This was great for us, since we needed to practice our starts and positioning and I had plenty of opportunities to play around with the numbers on my tablet.

Race day one arrived and surprisingly the wind was still fine. Just like during the training we had good breeze. Unfortunately, the rest of the week still looked bad, except for the last day of racing. We had two bad races and were pretty bummed on the sail in. But we would not be Team Niramo if we didn’t bounce back. On day two we found our groove with a 2^nd and a 3^rd. Day three we waited around for wind and ended up with a 10^th place in the only race of the day. The race committee actually started a second race which we came out of very strong but sadly the race was abandoned ¼ up the upwind because of too little wind.

Going into the last day we were not in a strong position in the results and the forecast that had looked so good only two days ago was now looking really bad. There were two chances for raceable conditions: very early in the morning with a northerly gradient or after a midday transition to a southerly breeze. The fleet ended up leaving the dock too late for the northerly breeze as it was already dying when we did our warmup. What followed was a couple of hours of very tedious waiting in no breeze and swell which made me feel a little seasick. As we waited it looked less and less likely that we were going to get any more races in. Then suddenly I heard the race committee over the radio informing us that they had a stable southerly breeze at the top mark.

We quickly got the boat ready and went for a short practice beat. With time running short the RC started us right away. We had a good race and ended up in 4^th place and thought we had finished the season in a decent position. It was almost 3:30pm which was the last time we could start another race. So it was unlikely that there was gonna be another race.

We were wrong. There was another race and we sailed it beautifully, leading the fleet after the first lap and extending our lead further into the finish. With the 4^th and the final race win we were the winner of the day and earned ourselves 4^th place in the overall ranking. Yet again we showed that it pays off to have a team where people don’t rotate every event (the crew has more or less been the same since I joined them in 2021) and where people respect each other and help each other out. Yet again we came back strong after bad races and bad days and did not let ourselves feel down.

For me the event started with the delivery of “NiRaMo” from Palma to Mahon. It was a very uneventful trip, with almost no breeze and flat water. So (unfortunately) no sails were hoisted but I had lots of time to study, zone out and chat with the owner of the boat. There truly is something serene about being at sea, alone with your crew and without phone reception. After 14 hours we made it safely to Mahon.

The event then was characterized by sloppy wavy conditions and only light breeze for most of the week. The first day was a glass off with no breeze for most of the day and a big thunderstorm cloud passing by. Most of our starts were far from great. We therefore started most races in tough spots which made the challenging conditions even more frustrating. Exceptions were one windy race in which we finished 3^rd, and the first race of the last day of the regatta which we won. With those races we showed that we are capable of being in the front of the fleet but needed to work on more consistent and better positioning in the starts. In the end, the result was quite disappointing, but we had collected important takeaways for the next and final event of the season: The World Championships in Scarlino.

29th July- 5th August

After a wobbly start into the season with half of my equipment breaking in Villasimius (including the navigation pc and the onboard network) I made sure that I would not run into any of these troubles again at any of the remaining regattas. Thankfully also the rest of the crew had realized that we needed to do something so in July we got an expert on the boat to give every piece of electronic that looked like it had its best days behind it a makeover.

Being the peak event of our season, and with the new electronics, the crew was in high spirits before the event. Palma is always a great place to be and usually delivers great seabreeze conditions. However, this year we were surprised by the weather with two days of very strong northerly breeze and a very shifty westerly breeze on the last day. With a penalty in one of the races in 25kts we did not have the best start to the regatta but with better race performance in the following races made our way up to 2^nd place going into the final day.

On the final day we had our struggles and almost lost our podium spot. We went around the top mark of the last race very much at the back of the fleet. It was “gloves off” as our tactician Cameron said to me. So we decided to gybeset and go to the opposite side of the race course than the fleet. We gained many positions back on that downwind – just enough to snatch back 2^nd place from the Italian Team with boat number 03 “Vitamina”.

In true Copa del Rey fashion, we enjoyed a fancy prize giving ceremony in the cathedral of Palma and received a handshake by the Spanish King.

An Tag 4 hatten wir erneut Startverschiebung wegen zu wenig Wind. Schließlich fuhren wir zu 4 weiteren Wettfahrten raus. Wir hatten uns am Abend zuvor mit unseren kanadischen Freunden darüber unterhalten, was wir ändern könnten, um auf dem Wasser schneller zu sein, und wir fanden, dass es zumindest ein wenig half. Am Ende des Tages belegten wir den 10. Platz, was bedeutete, dass wir es ins Medal Race geschafft hatten!!! Mein erstes Medal Race bei einer Kieler Woche. Es fühlte sich nicht wie ein Erfolg an, da wir nur ein einziges Boot geschlagen hatten, aber wir waren trotzdem froh, dass wir eine weitere Chance hatten, unser Ergebnis in der Regatta zu verbessern, eine weitere Chance, zu lernen, wie man diese Rakete gegen mehr als ein anderes Boot segelt. Außerdem sollten wir tatsächlich mehr als 10 Knoten Wind haben!

Das Medal Race begann bei 22 Knoten böigem Wind, aber mit flachem Wasser – fast perfekte Foiling-Bedingungen! Ich war ein bisschen nervös, da wir seit unserem Training in Kanada nicht mehr so schnell gewesen waren, aber es hat so viel Spaß gemacht! Leider verhakte sich unsere Großschot in einem der vielen Blöcke, durch die sie läuft (wir haben ein 16:1-Umlenkungssystem für die Großschot!), was bedeutete, dass wir sie maximal 5cm bewegen konnten… Das war definitiv nicht sehr vorteilhaft für das Foilen, vor allem auf dem Vorwindkurs, und wir wurden am Ende wieder Zehnte.

Danach war die Kieler Woche für mich jedoch nicht vorbei. Nach einem Ruhetag war es Zeit, mich auf mein erstes Offshore-Rennen der Saison vorzubereiten – das Silberne Band. Aber das ist eine Geschichte für einen anderen Artikel.

Ich möchte mich noch einmal bei all unseren Freunden bedanken, die uns geholfen haben, an die Startlinie zu kommen, besonders bei unserer guten Fee, die eine Nachtschicht eingelegt hat, um unsere Ruder schön glatt zu machen, und beim Flensburger Segelclub, der uns diese Veranstaltung ermöglicht hat, und vor allem, zusammen mit dem Seglerverband Schleswig-Holstein, uns mit einem wettbewerbsfähigen Spinnaker für die Regatta ausgestattet hat.

English Version

Day 4 saw us postponed again. Finally, we went out for 4 more races. We had consulted our Canadian friends the night before about what we could change to be faster on the water and we thought it helped at least a little. At the end of the day, we were in 10^th place which meant we made it to the medal race!!! My first medal race at a Kieler Woche. It didn’t feel like an achievement as there was only one boat that we beat but still we were happy that we had one more chance at improving our result in the regatta, one more chance at learning how to sail this rocket against more than one other boat. Plus, we were actually going to have some breeze!

The medal race started in 22kts of shifty puffy breeze but with flat water – almost perfect foiling conditions! I was a bit nervous as we had not been that fast since our training in Canada but it was so much fun! Unfortunately, our mainsheet got stuck in one of the many blocks it runs through (we have a 16:1 purchase system for the mainsheet!) which meant that our sheeting range was only about 5cm (in rope!!!). That definitely was not very favourable for foiling, especially downwind, and we ended up with another 10^th, but we fought hard until the end.

Kieler Woche was not over me after that. After a day of rest it was time to get ready for my first Offshore race of the season – the Silver Ribbon. But that’s a story for another article. I would like to thank again all of our friends who helped us get to the starting line, especially our fairy godmother who put in a night shift to make our rudders nice and smooth and the Flensburger Segelclub for making this event possible for us and especially, together with Seglerverband Schleswig-Holstein, equipping us with a competitive spinnaker for the racing.