Sail Down Under

HI!
We are back temporarily from the Sail Downunder series which included Sail Brisbane, Sail Sydney and Sail Melbourne. We departed for Sail Brisbane on the 20th of November driving up the coast to Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron. We set up camp at the club with some team mates from NSW, the Crawford Family and settled in for the next 10 days of our very first regatta together. We had a few days of training before the regatta began and a bit of time to set up the boat properly. The day before Day 1 the NSW team - Conways, Karl, Crawfords, Mikki and myself - we went to a buffet all you can eat lunch and then went to see a movie and rest up for the next day. The conditions we mainly choppy water and WINDY, even a little bit scary at times. The very last race was abandoned because it was a bit too much wind. Lots of good capsizes, one by us. Luckily most of the boats had a juice bottle at the top of the mast so the capsizes were not as bad as the could have been and it also saved a few bent masts. I got to see some of my family that had recently moved up to Queensland and had dinner with them at a Thai restaurant on the last night, it was a good chance to get away from the Club and the tent and listening to my cousins sailing school adventures of capsizing! Sail Brisbane was a fun regatta a good way to get into the routine for the following regattas. We then drove in convoy back the Maclean to stay overnight at Gabe's place to break the drive up. Many car cards were developed to keeps us all occupied and even rounds of I Spy were being held between the cars.
back in sydney for two days of training put together by Yachting Australia to get us ready for Sail Sydney. Thanks to my brother Oscar for towing 10 boat dolly's from middle harbour to woolahra so they everyone could just sail their boats over rather than having to pack it all up for a 20mins car trip.
Sail Sydney- back on our own water which made it a bit more comfortable. A good fleet of eighteen 470's made for some close competetive racing, and it was nice having a few more girls around. We started off well with an 11th which was a pretty good feeling! We had tofocus on our starts a little more and became a bit more confident by the end of the 4 days. on Day 4 we were delayed for a few hours as there was not a lot of wind and the boats that race before us were still waiting to leave the shore.
2 days later we left for Sail Melbourne which was being held at Sandringham Yacht Club on Port Phillip Bay. Again we drove in convoy playing the car games from our frist Road trip from Sail Brisbane. 2 more days of training were planned to get used to different conditions again and to get used to the out of control weather! Melbourne was now referred to as Mexico! Sail Brisbane was pretty different to the rest of the regattas. There were more boats, more on water Jury's, the medal race, GPS tracking devices on the marks and boat, the Media and it was a Grade 1 ISAF regatta. The first day girls and boys raced seprately but the two fleets were combined after this to make one big fleet which made it tricky but gave good experience for racing in a bigger fleet. Our racing at this regatta was much better than the previous regattas. We changed a few roles on the boat and everthing ran smoother. Our starts improved and we made it to the top mark a few times in the top ten. The last day was the Medal race for the top 10 female and male boats in the fleet. GPS trackers were attatched to our boat and we raced right out the front of the club for all the spectators to watch. It was really awesome to have everyone watching. We had never experienced anything like that before and it was the first Medal race we'd ever done! Hopefully we will make it into the Medal Race next year too!
After the race we headed in to pack up and go to the presentation. Mikki and I recieved a trophy for 3rd Women Overall in the DownUnder Series. We we very proud as all our training and hard work over the year had paid off and we were rewarded. Shame they only gave us one trophy to share! We headed off for Pizza that night with the road trip gang and filled up our belly's. The next day we decided to go shopping while the boys went rock climbing, and only stopped when we ran out of money.
Our last night at the Taylors house, where we stayed for the entire regatta, we cooked up a huge dinner, it nearly didnt fit in the saucepan, and dessert to say Thanks. Then we left in the morning to drive around the other side of port phillip bay to Sorrento for 2 days of training to prepare for Nationals which we will be leaving for on thwe 2nd of January!