420 Lupo Cup and 420 World Championships W O RD S: DUN C A N G REG O R | IM AGES: M A RCIN J OZEFO W SKI A ND ME T T E JA C O B SEN
Sailing
A
fter nearly 18 months of no overseas regattas, Julia Jacobsen and I arrived in Italy ready to blow away the cobwebs. Beginning in Lake Garda we were preparing for our preworlds regatta, the Lupo Cup. The training before the event gave us a few days to get used to the general conditions and make improvements to the boat we would be using whilst in Italy. We came into the regatta wanting to learn what we needed to improve on coming into the World Championships whilst implementing what we learnt into each day of the regatta. We believed that due to the lack of racing experience, compared to European countries, we would struggle on starts, strategy and tactics. This meant these were our main goals going into the event. We knew that strategy and tactics would improve through more racing hours and that the strategy would be made easier to follow if we got a good start.
and with a clear lane going where we desired. Throughout the regatta we would analyse the strategy and tactics after each race and then again at the end of each day. In the last two days we got the pre-race strategy wrong in some races insofar as what we expected to happen, did not. However, it gave us the opportunity to improve our tactics to climb positions within the race and find out more areas for improvement.
Going into Race 1 we focused on being able to work on a way to get off the line with a lane
Arriving at San Remo for the 420 World Championships we met up with our teammates,
24
| OCTOBER 2021 AHOY!
At the end of the regatta, we had some clear areas to work on and to continue focusing on. This regatta gave us the confidence that we had the speed to achieve our goals coming into the 420 World Champs but knew that we would have to get lanes off the line; have clear and improved communication about the breeze, course and boats, whilst ensuring the boat is going fast. This enables us to make better decisions on the racecourse and follow the plan.
Sorcha Whyte and Oriane Voets, and our coach for the World and European Championships, Marcin Jozefowski. With two weeks before the start of the regatta we had time to work on smaller details before the majority of the countries arrived. When they did, we focused on racing practice races. We worked very hard on these two weeks to put us in the best position possible before the championship. We experienced a wide range of conditions in the two weeks allowing us to understand what it would be like for the Championship itself however the 2nd week was lighter meaning we only raced against others in the light breeze. Sorcha and Oriane were entered into the Women’s fleet and Julia and I into the Open fleet. On Day 1 of the Worlds Team J&D were able to get off the line very well in all 3 starts and get round the top mark in the top three in two races. With the breeze being around 14kts it built the sea state exposing a
