Sail For Gold

Sail for Gold was held in Weymouth, the  2012 Olympic site for sailing,from the 4th to the 9th of June. We only ended up sailing three of the days after the regatta was cut short when a storm came through and winds started to blow north of 30kts. I finished 79th out of the 95 boats that were entered in the event.
We arrived in Weymouth after Delta Lloyd and started training right away. We did five days of training before the regatta started. Training was really good because we were able to train with a group that included  the three best Laser sailors in the world. It was a great experience.


The regatta started with one of the longest days that I can remember  having at an event. We were at the club at nine and on the water at quarter to ten for the scheduled start time of 11 o’clock. After towing 45 min out to the course we started our first race on time. However the wind quickly died and the race committee was forced to abandon the race and send us all to shore to wait for wind. Finally at around 5 o’clock our AP flag came down and we all went back out with another 45min tow. We did get one race off but it was past 8:30 by the time we were off the water.  The race that we did get off was in light wind with some really strong current.

Strong currents, shifty winds and skewed sloppy waves were the norm for the event.  By day two the wind had started to build and we got three races off. Though they got us caught up and back on schedule, r it was another long day with a very long tow in.  On day three there were about 18-20kts and the trickiest down winds that I have sailed in a long time.

On the fourth day the forecast was for the wind to build throughout the day so the race committee moved the sliver fleets start  back in the day. This was to make sure that the gold fleet could get their races off before the storm came in. Gold fleet did get their races off but when it was time for our fleets to go it was too windy to send us out.  We spent a long time at the club waiting around for something to happen but in the end the wind never did die down and we did not get any races off that day.

For our last day they moved all of the races until later because the wind was forecast to die later in the day. After some time waiting around it became obvious that the wind was not going to die and the race committee blew off the day. After that we packed up the trailer and that was the end of Sail for Gold. It was a bit of a disappointment not to get any sailing on the last two days of the event but we did get a lot of training before the event. I am now on my way home for bit of a break after almost two months on the road. I am looking forward to it. The next event that I will be sailing will be the Waves Regatta out of Royal Vancouver Yacht Club. Then it is off the Gorge for the Laser North Americans.


-Kyle