Over the President’s Day weekend, Miami Yacht Club hosted the first of the two 29er qualifiers for the Youth World Championships that will be held in Poland this summer. Three teams from the West coast traveled to the Florida to compete. With the wind expected to be light we had high hopes of doing well.
We (my mom, brother Noah, and I) flew out on Wednesday for Miami. We finally landed at the airport after a long day of travel and claimed all of our bags. We headed to Key Biscayne to spend time with Maru, our old head coach from SDYC.
The next morning, we drove to the yacht club and took off our boat from the trailer that had just crossed the country with our boat. After rigging it all back up, we headed out for our first day of training. Miami Yacht Club is about 30 minutes by tow to the ocean where we would be sailing through channels with fast motor boats, really big cruise ships, and even bigger container ships.
Our first day on the water had 15 knots of breeze, we didn’t hold anything back. We set the kite and off we went, flying downwind surfing the 6 foot waves. It was so fun we did it a few times before heading back in. We had one more day of training before the regatta, so on the second day, we went out with one of the other teams from the West Coast.
The first day of racing was with breeze from the south east shifting to the south throughout the day, with 7 to 8 knots so it was a good day of racing. We posted a great set of scores the first day with a 5, 4, 13, and 4 placing us in fourth overall.
The second day was light and lumpy out in the ocean. It was hard to get through the chop in the ocean and on top of that sail smart. We had a harder day staying consistent with scores of 11, 4, 10, and 4 still keeping us in fourth overall.
The last day was the lightest day of all with steep waves and large chop. We only had two races but spent a long day on the water waiting for the I420s to get off a start since they were down by a race. We got a 7 and 6 to keep us in fourth overall.
In total there were 24 boats racing the qualifier. Most of the teams at the top end have world championship experience. We were definitely the youngest team out there and this was really our first major regatta outside of California. We were really happy with how we finished and can’t wait for the next part of the qualifier in Coronado and I hope to see you there.
Thank you to SDYC for supporting us!