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Auckland, NZ
February 28, 2008
It’s been a little while since I’ve written, so here’s my update about how things are going on the other side of the world. After the Sail Auckland event, I took a couple of days off. We moved from the harborside suburb of Kohimarama, where I sailed the regatta, across the harbor bridge to the ocean beachfront suburb of Takapuna.
 Three back-to-back world champs – a mammoth task for a small club
The worlds are being sailed out of the Takapuna Boating Club, a very active little club at one end of a lovely long sandy beach. The club perches on a steep grassy slope that goes down to the water. There’s a broad expanse of sand at low tide but at high tide there is not beach at all, which will make for tricky launching when we have to deal with that.
With the support of Yachting New Zealand and other Auckland clubs, Takapuna Boating Club has taken on the mammoth task of hosting three back-to-back world championships, all in Olympic classes. Currently they are running the Tornado World Championship which makes for a rather crowded boat park, especially when you consider the boat park is on a grassy hillside.
 Takapuna Beach at half tide
My plan was to take a couple of days off and then start training with Brad Funk in the Radials. We ran some errands on the Wednesday and went to a very cool aquarium. Kelly Tarlton’s Underwater World is hidden under a roadway and a parking lot on the harbor’s edge The aquarium was very cool. Their very large collection of penguins includes King and Gentoo penguins all living in their icy underground lair. We were there when they were feeding the stingrays. The rays were massive…one of them was 240kg. On Thursday we moved over to Takapuna and that afternoon Brad managed to get his hands on a foiler Moth.
 Flying on foils
He took the Moth out and in a building breeze claims his GPS said he reached 27 knots. I wouldn’t doubt it given that it was a good 15-18 knots gusting over 20 knots. The building breeze was the beginning of a low that would pound the island for the next two days. We had winds of 30-40 knots for the next 48 hours, with constant rain. I was hoping to start sailing again on Friday, but the weather conditions didn’t permit it. Instead we headed down to the beach and watched the locals boardsailors and kiteboarders making the most of the storm and waves.
 Rippin’ in the storm
The wind was from the NNE which meant it was straight on shore. Unfortunately, the pounding waves scoured out sections of beach and filling other areas with piles of seaweed. The regatta organizers cancelled a practice race on Sunday and spent the day rebuilding the beach so the Tornados could launch and race on Monday.
So on Monday, I got my boat, rigged up and started my training. We have had all sorts of conditions this week so far, from 14 knots down to two knots. All of the days have been great practice though. There are a lot of girls here already training, with many more expected to show up in the next week or so. I’m looking forward to more showing up so that we can get some racing going and start figuring out the conditions on the Hauraki Gulf. The conditions so far have been quite tricky with very shifty winds, which make for constant focus tactically.
Luther Carpenter arrives on Tuesday. I’m looking forward to having a coach to help me fine tune certain areas of my sailing so I will be full speed for the Worlds. I have one more day of sailing before I take the weekend off to recover a little before I get back at it on Monday. Brad is planning on sailing a Moth regatta over the weekend which works out well with my schedule so I may go and watch him one of the days…we’ll see though, the forecast is for wind and rain, so I may just stay inside and watch movies.
We have a practice regatta on March 8-9, so I’ll write an update after that. As always I want to acknowledge my sponsors Carmeuse and K-Swiss for their continued support of my campaign for the Olympic Gold Medal in Beijing 2008.
Sail hard,
Anna |
