Miami OCR

The Miami OCR regatta is over and I am heading up the coast to Clearwater. The Miami OCR was held from Jan 22^th to Jan 28^th. I finished 50^th out of the 74 boats entered. Find results here. I was happy with this result but more than that I was happy with the way that my down wind speed had improved. I felt like I was going fast and even able to pass people. This is a big step forward for me as last year I was getting to top marks is good shape but being passed by boats on the downwind.

The weather for this event really could not have been better. I think that this might have been one of the most consistent Miami OCRs wind wise in quite some time. We never had a start delayed waiting for wind and every day there was enough to be hiking at some point in the day with most of the event being between 6kts and 15kts. The race committee did a great job getting off all the races at the scheduled time despite the fact that were 5 fleets on one course.

Our accommodation was the same place that we stayed last year. A nice apartment about a 10min bike from the sailing venue but right across the street from a gym and grocery store. By the time the event started there were 6 of us staying in the place. We did group meals every night and it seemed to work out quite well.

 This year the Lasers were sailed out of the US Sailing center which is a change as we have been sailing out of the convention center. The US Sailing center is nice but it does get a bit crowded at times and there is no parking. It was a nice spot to be biking to.

I was lucky enough to be able to fly in just over a week before the event was to start. I spent this time training and working on my down wind speed. After a 3hr on water session training with team Canada, Ricardo and I would finish off with a long down wind. Leaving ourselves with no options but to sail in one day this took us over an hour and a half. After we got in we would head back to our place, eat some food the then head over to the gym for a bit. It was great training and the weather was warm. Not much changed after the regatta started as we were on water quite early most mornings so had a fair bit of time in the afternoon to do stuff.

Now the trailer is loaded and we are driving up the coast to Clearwater for over a month of training. We are going to be focusing on downwind, doing some really long ones where we sail downwind then tow the boats back up with the coach boat.

-Kyle