A Big announcement and some catching up

Announcement and Intro

First off, I would like to start today’s newsletter with some news which has been in the works for the past few months. I am excited to announce that I have officially become a member at the Oakville Yacht Squadron. OYS has a long history of supporting sailors from Oakville on their journey to represent Canada at the Olympic Games. Recently they were represented at the 2016 games in Rio de Janeiro by Oakville sailor Lee Parkhill, and in the past have supported Don Hains, Ted Hains, & Oskar Johansson in their journeys to the Olympics. Since its founding in 1965 Oakville Yacht Squadron has consistently punched above its weight at international competitions over the years and I can’t wait to continue the tradition of excellence while representing them at the highest level. This summer I will be representing OYS at the North American Championships in Long Beach, and then subsequently at the World Sailing World Championships in the Hauge, Netherlands. All eyes will be on us as this will be our first opportunity to qualify Canada for a spot at the 2024 Paris Olympics. With the support of OYS moving forward into this final year of the Olympic cycle I know I am positioned perfectly to make the starting line in Paris.

Training in Malta

Now with this exciting news announced, it is time to look back and reflect on the training of the last few months. It has been a whirlwind of a winter and spring season. I have spent almost the entirety of 2023 so far in Europe training and racing. I’ve driven across Europe, I’ve had training camps in Malta and Croatia with some of the best sailors in the world. I’ve raced the European in Andorra, Italy Championships (finishing top Canadian), as well as the princess Sofia Regatta in Palma de Mallorca where I fought a close battle to finish a disappointing runner up in our Pan Am Games trials. Now finally I have a week off to sit and reflect on a tiring but very productive period before I pack up the truck and trailer and head off for the first of a series of summer training camps in California.

Long Period of Training

After a low-key New Year’s celebration with my girlfriend and her family in Ireland, I was off to start my first training camp of 2023 in Malta! I had spent the last year raving about the Maltese winter to all the guys on the Canadian Squad and I had finally convinced them that it was worth making the trip over to take advantage of the big winds and swell. We joined in with the usual SailCoach suspects, Vishnu from India, Nick from Hong Kong, and Aly from Egypt. But we were also joining in with the Croatian training group which includes Pavlos (Olympic Silver medalist 2012, and 2 time world champion) and Tonci (2 time Olympic silver medalist) as well a group of other sailors who are all ranked among the top 20 in the world. I have trained with these guys in Malta in previous years and it is always an exhausting but very productive period. I remember the first year that I spent in Malta Vishnu described their training style to me as “Like going to war”. Maybe a touch dramatic but honestly not far off. They are very aggressive on the water and treat every drill like it were the deciding race of the World Championships. If you mess up you get yelled at, if you are slow, you get left behind. They are ruthless because they can be, but at the same time they are the best in the world and when you are training with them it becomes apparent how they got that way. One point that I have taken from them which I try to implement in my own training and any training groups that I join is their pace. Their training sessions are short, 2 to 2.5 hours, but there are hardly any breaks. Every drill leads right into the next and every second is maximized to extract the maximum value from the day

After three weeks of tiring training in Malta we had short week of rest before we were to be back for our second block of 2023. We had been invited to Split, Croatia for February to continue our training with the Croatians but before that we had a shipment of New ILCA’s waiting for us that had to be picked up!

At the end of 2022 we had reached an agreement as a team with Devoti Sailing (one of the new ILCA manufactures) to be brand ambassadors. This of course meant that we would be sailing on Devotis from now on which was very exciting news as they are considered to be the fastest ILCA’s currently in production. (Yes, I have to say that, but lucky for me it’s also true!) Their factory is in the south of Poland which was convenient for us as we had to go to Poland anyway to pick up the team van and trailer which we would be renting for the summer. I volunteered to make the drive and managed to convince my girlfriend Emily join me for the road trip which I promised would be very exciting. We both flew into Gdansk, Poland which, as is to be expected in the dead of winter, was covered in snow and after picking up the van and trailer spent our first day driving south through the Polish countryside.

The Devoti factory was an interesting place to visit. Before we loaded our boats, I received a tour of the converted Soviet era textile factory from the owner Luca Devoti. Luca himself was an Olympic Finn sailor and for many years was a world-renowned Finn builder until he recently made his foray into the ILCA fleet. It was very interesting to see the process of how the boats are molded and then hulls and decks attached. It was also very nice to see the level of care and quality control that goes into each boat to make sure they are all identical but more importantly to make sure they are all lightening quick. After loading the whole rig up as the sun was setting, we stopped for a nice dinner before driving the last few hours over the border into the Czech Republic where we had booked into an old castle to stay for the night.

Inside the Devoti factory

Over the course of two more days, we made our way down through Austria, Slovenia and finally Croatia to arrive in Split. Though we had spent three days driving south there was snow on the ground right up until three hours out of Split when we passed through a final tunnel onto the Adriatic side of the mountain range. It was incredible to see the difference in climate on either side of the mountains, though not to say that it was exactly warm in Split either. During our 3 weeks there we often sailed in temperatures below 5 degrees and sometimes even made the fatal mistake of checking the weather in Toronto only to find out that it was actually warmer at home! The silver lining however was the water temperature which would momentarily save you with a splash before the razor sharp wind cut back.

Split did have another mode however, in complete contrast to the frigid winds that fell from the mountains. Some days it would be very warm, 15-20 degrees but when that happened there was almost always no wind. Unfortunately, over the course of our time in split we lost several days to this lack of breeze. And though the time we did spend training was very productive with an amazing group the consensus at the end of the camp was a hint of disappointment and an agreement that we had to prioritize consistent venues in the future.

With a second long camp in the books, I was finally able to head home for some rest and try to cement some of my learnings from the previous two months before I had to be back in Italy and ready to go for the first major event of 2023, the European Championships.

at a castle in czech republic

Racing the Euro Champs and Princess Sofia Regatta

The European championships this year were unusually early in the season. In the past few years, they have been in the fall but this year it was to be the middle of March. Andorra Italy, not to be confused with the country of Andorra is a quiet little town in the North, just about half an hour from the French border. We had been expecting it to be quite cold for racing in Andorra but to our surprise it was quite mild. The week leading up to racing provided us with a couple of very nice training days with 18 knots and large swell from the southwest. Though for the final two days of training we had the unfortunate condition of light wind and large swell from the opposite direction of the wind. A nightmare for anyone who suffers the slightest bit from seasickness, even I was feeling a little queasy and that is a rarity.

This regatta had no particular bearing for us other than it being the Euro Champs, but we were mainly using it as a steppingstone to prepare for Princess Sofia regatta in Palma which was our Pan Am Games trials. As a result, the atmosphere within the team was quite relaxed though of course we were all anxious to put our big winter of training to work.

The first two days of racing turned out to be complete drifters. We managed to get one race off on the first day, but the final downwind leg was so light that the Jury decided to make the executive decision to abandon their duties for the day early. This is something that happens occasionally, race committees become desperate to get races off in light wind and it leads to mistakes in race management. This has become a major point of contention between athletes and organizing authorities recently. The problem usually goes something like this; after a long day or days of sitting around waiting for wind the race committee is behind schedule due to no fault of their own, but there is finally just enough wind to get a race off and so we go to work. The qualifying fleets who start their race first will usually get around the course with the wind still in the acceptable range for racing but now there is added pressure for all the fleets to finish the day with the same number of races. The last of the qualifying fleets will be more than halfway through their race when the wind begins to die, slowly it will die and die until there is so little wind that the sails won’t even fill on the downwind without the sailor adding body movement. Being on the final downwind leg of the race the sailors will be fighting for every inch, as in these light winds a boat length could easily cost you ten points or more. In doing so many boats will start to roll gybe many times or even continuously in an attempt to generate wind and propel the boat to the finish. In this situation it is the jury’s job to penalize those who are breaking the rules by using their body to generate propulsion, but at the same time the race committee who is desperate to finish the race knows that there is so little wind that without some propulsion the race will not be finished. In the end the Jury will often turn a blind eye, leaving everyone to cheat as much as they want. Those who play by the rules will lose out and those who don’t will be rewarded with a good finishing position. Of course, what should happen is the race should be abandoned when the wind falls consistently below the 5 knot threshold, as per the class rules, but due to some combination of laziness, indecision and incompetence that exists in many race committees we end up with bush league races being held at events which claim to be world class. It is a situation that is all too common, and it leaves everyone with a sour taste in their mouths.

views in andora

Regardless for me in the end it had no bearing as it turns out I was black flagged for an early start, resulting in a DSQ on my only race of that day. A disappointing setback but it was only the first race of the regatta, and I knew there was plenty of time left to mount a comeback. Day two came and went without a breath of wind and so day three, the last day of qualifying there were three races scheduled. With only my DSQ so far it was certainly all to play for. With 15-18 knots blowing offshore there were large shifts and plenty of pressure differences across the course. I managed to bang out three very good races that day including an 8th place finish in the second race which is my first ever top ten finish at a major international regatta, a milestone I was quite happy to finally achieve. In the end I moved up 137 places overall to qualify for gold fleet heading into finals racing. Being the only Canadian to qualify for gold fleet meant that I had also wrapped up my position as top canuck, another first for me at a Worlds or European Championships. This was a nice couple of achievements for me to start the year off on and left me poised perfectly heading into the Princess Sofia Regatta which would be worth all the marbles.

With our first regatta of the 2023 in the books it was time for a week break before I headed back to work. While most of the guys flew home to Canada I headed back to Ireland to spend some time with Emily. It has been really nice over the past year to have a sort of second home with her there. I am able to stay close in Europe to where lots of my training is happening and I also get to spend plenty of time with her as I rest and recover before getting back to sailing. I always enjoy my time there and it is always hard to say goodbye, but it is a routine that we have gotten used to. And so, after the week I was off to Palma to try and qualify for the pan am games.

Coming off a solid European champs I was confident I could continue my momentum into what was the most important event of the year, but unfortunately that was not to be the case. Palma is a notoriously tricky venue. It is a big bay which often generates a nice medium strength sea breeze, but it is also situated on an island in the middle of the Mediterranean which means that it is easily affected by all sorts of systems that roll through and wreak havoc on race committees. This was the case for our first two days of racing. Only managing to get off one race per day we were berated throughout with 45 degree shifts, sudden complete losses of wind, lightning and thunder, and multiple abandoned races. To their credit, in complete contrast to the European championships, the race committee did an amazing job of managing the conditions as best as possible. They were thrown many curve balls but, in the end, proved to be one of the most competent race committees I have ever encountered. Heading into the third and final day of qualifying with only two races completed I knew that there was still plenty to play for and I went into the day knowing that anything was possible. Unfortunately though, in the end my results were painfully mediocre. Each race started decently, and they all had some moments but, in the end, I would always end up slipping to just a bit better than mid fleet. After the end of qualifying, I had missed the gold fleet cut by about 20 points and by the end of the regatta I had finished up second Canadian and just inside the top half overall.

It is hard to know that you are capable of something exceptional but fail to deliver when it really matters. In these moments it helps to have some perspective, seeing how far I have come in the last two years helps me to stay positive. Even just a year ago, I remember going into the Princess Sofia Regatta thinking that I would be very happy with a top half result and now here I am a year later bitterly disappointed to have missed qualification for gold fleet. A year ago I was striving to establish myself as one of the top 4 Canadians, just to secure a place on the team, and now I am disappointed to only finish runner up in the Pan Am trials and not be the established number one. Perspective shows how my goals have shifted, which is a sign of my improvements, and my hunger for more. Always happy, never satisfied.

Falling short of your goals sucks. There is absolutely nothing fun about it. And yet if you are always meeting your goals, maybe you aren’t aiming high enough. And so, we continue in this cyclical pattern of ups and downs and as we add perspective, we see that they are trending upwards towards our macro end goals with every point along the way a point of either success or of learning.

Liam and and I spotting cool cars in Mallorca

What’s Next Up!

Now that I have had some time off to reflect on that past few months of training and racing it is time to look forward into how I can improve and come back stronger than ever. Next week I will be driving a trailer full of boats from Toronto out to Long Beach California where we will be setting up for a series of training camps this summer. We are hoping that the consistent sea breeze in Long Beach and a focused training group will provide us with the perfect setting to do some major work on our downwind technique. I am looking forward to being based in one place for an extended period. That consistency is something that I haven’t had for the past year, and I think it is a very underrated part of a quality training environment.

At the end of July, I will be competing in the North American Championships in Long Beach and then I will finally be heading back to Europe to compete in the World Sailing Championships. This is our first chance to qualify Canada for a spot at the 2024 Paris Olympics and my sole focus for the next 3 and a half months.

As always if you have made it this far and enjoy following along my Olympic journey, please consider becoming a Patron through my website. All support is immensely appreciated and goes directly to funding my Olympic campaign. I have also updated my gallery with plenty of pictures of my travels, as well as my press section with some recent coverage I have received in local newspapers.

Thank you and until next time,

James