Something new to us, that seems quite helpful so far, is all of the time and work we've been doing with a great sport psychologist over the past few weeks.  To be honest, I wasn't that into it at first, but as we got to know each other and he got to know about our sport and 49er racing, we both really warmed up to it, and in the past two weeks, Dan and I both felt as if we made some headway.  We worked mostly on imagery.  Dan and I would think of some very specific situations in a race that we've been in, and we basically picked them apart, down to the second, and towards the end of each one, it was so fresh in our minds it was as if we were just racing, but really we haven't been in the boat in a month.  To make a long story short, we feel it was productive and we will continue to be in contact with him on skype.  In the meantime, we have a "playbook" to write in order to keep the juices flowing when we're not in battle.

Right now we are in Toronto airport, and we have been all afternoon, but we board for Paris in an hour.  We arrive there at 0940, then we get the car, drive north to the ferry to England, and then we will hopefully be in northern England by tomorrow night sometime.  Tuesday we get the hitch put on our car, and put together our boat and equipment at the factory there.  Wednesday afternoon we are hoping to leave and drive to Weymouth (south England), where we have to work on the boat.  It takes around 100 hours to setup a new boat, but we will try to do it in 2 long days with 3 people.  Saturday we're getting the ferry back to france, and then driving to Barcelona, where we get a night ferry to Mallorca, where our training camp and the next event will be.  We will have about 5 days to sail before the camp starts, but even after 100 hours of boat work, we know that as soon as we sail it for the first time, we are going to have to change a lot of small things, so really that 5 days will turn into 3, but we'll be ready to rock then. 

Monday was a little harsh because there was no wind in the morning, and under 5 knots in the afternoon.  We decided to stay inside the causeway and not enter into the bay because there was no breeze, and huge black clouds off to the east, in a northerly wind.  Not  north for long.  It went from 5 knots to 30  from the east in about 3 minutes.  We decided to put the boat on her side and wait it out, but after 20 minutes it didn't die and we could see heavy rain about 5 minutes away.  We definitely did not put up our chute, but we were locked in the footstraps and made it in in just a couple of minutes, and the squall came with zero visibility, it's a good thing we weren't outside, and some people were happy to see us on shore.

Now that we have no boat or gear, this evening we just finished the last 2 months accounting, and we're off to the 24 hour fitness in a bit, for our last workout there for a year.  Still no situps or biking, butt soon,

1. the last 1:30 of the start.  During this time we should be stopped about 2 boat lengths from the line, no reversing, double tacking, or slipping sideways, just still and stable.  Dan pulls on the controls, then we switch sheets, clip ourselves in and the goal is to go full power between 8-5 seconds before the gun and hitting the line with speed and confidence that we are clear.  So we are going to use a mark on the bay as a reference point for a start line.

2. Focus and distractions.  It is so important for us to be in sync with our movements, and we really need to be able to predict the others movements and know what the other is thinking in order really keep the boat going as fast as possible on autopilot, so we can have our heads out of the boat and work on the race.  We are going to switch jobs to expand our awareness of the feel for the boat from the other side. 

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday:  7-9am (run, workout, eat and get to the boat park) 930-12, starting drills and short windward/leeward’s.  130-4pm 2 lap courses while switched jobs.  5-7 go to the gym and get our moneys worth because we haven't been there all week!  Thursday we have to ship some equipment overseas and fly home at 1330!

This morning it was only us on the water with our coach, but no other 49ers.  We worked on starting drills in a light breeze, and it was great.  We feel that I got the most out of the starting drills, because I learned a great trick/technique with the jib.  Dan got the most out the acceleration for mainly the gybes, but the tacks also.  He learned a great trick with the spinnaker that makes us exit the turn with much better acceleration and without me having to turn up an additional 10 degrees, provided my turn compliments his sheeting!  Although we both had our moments where one of us got more out of it than the other, overall we made our boat faster, and when we're in sync and doing our jobs right the results were and are amazing.  It is so easy to tell when we hit it right, and we compliment each other by our actions in the boat, and doing our jobs right.

Don't worry, we didn't change anything major, in fact, we barely changed anything at all, but small is big in this boat.  This afternoon we put our starting and acceleration into play in some races, and we did very well.  We hooked up with our coach before and after every race to talk about race strategy and where we did, or could have gained around the course.  Our results were great.  Tonight we have a final debrief, just to make sure we crystal clear about what we improved on, but it is quite obvious, and we're only going to get faster. 

Tomorrow morning we have registration, measurement, and boat maintenance to prepare for Miami Olympic Regatta, which we are very excited to race in.

Today was awesome; we were back sailing and it felt great, not my butt, the sailing.  We went out for an hour in the afternoon and tried out a lot of small changes/upgrades we did to the boat over the past few days, and we even won a practice race with 12 boats!  We got off the start line very fast, but we tacked a few seconds late and rounded the top mark in 7th, behind a pack, then we gybe hoisted because of good pressure, in first at the bottom, and then simply connected all of the dots/gusts and stayed between the immediate few boats and the mark, and it worked out great.  Although, overall we made the right strategic calls with the gusts, and I was able to keep my head more out of the boat while Dan focused on the sails, we still need to work on our auto pilot because some immediate gust response was sacrificed due to the focus on the strategy and reading the wind, but that's ok because we are going out for 2 sessions tomorrow!!  I am going to listen to my body and not push it too hard, but my tailbone feels a lot better, and the swelling and severe pain has gone down significantly.  I even had an easy jog to the gym early this morning and I was passed by an old lady, but it still felt good to be moving.

Dan did an amazing job on fiber glassing and doing the cosmetics on the bow, and people are giving him lots of comments on how smooth it is, and a lot of the small "upgrades" on the boat are mostly his doing and they work very well, and the grip is sweet, but wait until we wax her up and put the race kit on, she's going to be slick. 

We met up with Pete, who is an Englishman that heads the Danish Sailing Federation, and we haven't seen him since July.  As we were catching up and discussing some of our results over the past year, I expressed some frustration and admitted that Dan and I both expected to do more damage in the World Circuit right off the bat.  His reply was that with the amount of work that we are putting into our campaign, which seems to be more than the rest, our results will come and if we keep working as we are it will pay off a lot more than we think.  Of course Dan and I are very aware of that and we are a little more patient than I’m making us out to be, but it is cool to hear it come from someone who has no obligation or ties to us in any way.

Anyways, Dan is up sewing one of our jibs and I’m going to make a dohnut for my butt to put in my trapeze harness!

We are out for racing today and tomorrow, which in the big picture is no big deal because next week is such an important event.  We wouldn't learn much today because I would just be dealing with the pain in my busted tailbone.  To be honest, right now I'm a little down because there is not much that I can do, and in some ways I feel that I wasted some good races, time and money by getting injured.  At least here on land I will recover, but if we were racing right now there would be no chance of recovering.  We did sand and re-grip the end of our wings, if you look in the picture, all of the white that we are standing on is now all black with grip tape, and not just any grip tape, fisherman's IMP grip tape from Pippy place in town.  We found it lasted way longer than what we purchased from a 49er shop!  We had packing tape over a minor hole in the port bow during the World's, but Dan filled and sprayed it very nicely with gelcoat, and he might get to do it again because we just got a big rain, thunder and lightning squall.

I do feel a world of better than I did this morning, the ice and ibuprofen is doing its job.  Later tonight we are going to the race officer to try and get all $250 USD back from registration, but that won't be easy.  When Dan comes back from the gym, we're going to check the status of the boat repairs, and then work on some dates with flights, camps, accomidations, new equipment, and car and trailer pick up in Europe.

With regards to our Texas training camp.  In the end, some of the teams decided that they want a week off before we move our boats and start training there, whereas we were prepared to go right after the event.  If we go on their plans, which we kind of have to, we would only be home for 4 days before going to Europe for 3 months, so we decided it's best to come home for 2 weeks, but not much longer, before heading across to the heavy European circuit, and not as rookies!  Actually, as of Miami Olympic Regatta next week, we are officially no longer rookies, and that is another small piece to go into our great performance next week.

The good news is that we had a great start, and a pretty good race, we think 7th or 8th out of 20 or 22.  Even though every race and regatta is important, I can't kill myself this week because next week is Miami Olympic Regatta, and that is the second most important performance event for the year for us, next to European Championships in Poland in July.  Either way, I'm going to ice for an hour and then we're going to sleep because we are going to have some great racing tomorrow.

Wow, it looks so warm, but it's no more than 15 degrees here.  A touch of rain and fog and we'd have a nice summer day back home,  just what we like.

We are really looking forward to getting back on the water and working on our starts, and our "autopilot" so we can focus more on the strategic and tactical aspects of our racing.  The thing with the 49er is that it's the hardest boat to sail fast therefore so much energy is focused on the boat while much is needed for the race itself, just like in any sailboat racing.  We have some smart racing and training coming up along with the product of the two, great results!!!

Our accomidations are good, it's basically a hotel room with a mini fridge and a microwave, but we bought a air mattress and a kettle.  Now i'm not complaining because I know it's -10 back home, but has gone down to the single digits here in the night, and we have no heating, so we sleep in our team jackets and winter hats, but it's getting warmer all of the time.  Although we have no cooking facilities in our room, there is a BBQ on the property, so we've been using that in the evening, breakfast in the room, and lunch on the fly.  The only problem is that I like spicy stuff, and I found a fat free habanero bbq sauce, but I tend to over do it and my last 2 lunches and dinners have been extremely uncomfortable, even though I use less everytime, Dan calls it right away and next thing you know I have my head under the sink.  I do know that my uncle in Tanzania, who I have never met before, has the same spicy problem so maybe I'll ask him about it when I do get to finally meet him, but the first thing I will do is shake his hand and put an Olympic Gold Medal around his neck, that will happen.

Another early night tonight because tomorrow, we get our boat back, and Miami Olympic Regatta will be the last major competition on this boat, because we have to get the new lighter and faster design in March.  Most teams already have it along with some first wave production issues, that's why we held off, but either way, let's make Miami, our Olympic Campaign and Team Canada anniversary, the best event yet.

It has been really busy today and yesterday with packing up and trying to get our boat out here, but it just left....on a Sunday!  Although we had to take all liquids and pastes out for the shipment!?!  That is almost $200 worth of stuff, and that sucks.  We are looking forward to going to Miami and starting training and then racing.  We have a coach hired for 2 days there, and we have been invited to go and train with 5 boats in Texas, with free accomidations in February.  In the meantime, we are going to make a big step in the next week with our sailing, and do some amazing racing and training.  Dan and I are the best 49er team in the world, and when we reach our full potential together, we know that we will be on the top of the podium, that is a fact and it will never change.

Although it has only been 10-15 degrees here, on the race course it has just been blazing.  All three days have been over 20kts and the race committee reported an average of 26kts on our course during the second day.  As you can imagine this produced a lot of drama and injuries.  It is sad and unfortunate that 2 brand new boats were totally destroyed, a safety officer was rushed to the hospital after getting taken out by a 49er, and I have been handing out extra strong ibuprofen like I work at Lawtons.  The Italian skipper was towed behind the boat by his ankle after crashing, and was walking around in a plaster cast after day 2 and I'm pretty sure he cut it off because he was racing yesterday and now they're in 2nd........good on him.  Although our sails are getting very tired fast, especially the spinnaker, we haven't broken anything major, but I was also towed behind the boat when a sheet wrapped around my neck as we crashed.  As Dan was trying to catch up to the boat and me he said I made a noise that didn't even sound human.

Overall with our sailing we are not too disappointed, but we are certainly not thrilled.  Although our speed, boat handling, and professionalism have obviously improved dramatically in this heavy weather, some split second decisions can be expensive.  We have rounded the top mark in the single digits a few times, but we find that each second lost is at least one boat lost in many of the slip ups, whether it is a bad tack in a huge puff, or being 3 seconds late on the gybe call, or reacting to a gust instead of anticipating the monsters.  All of that being said, what we need to do and where we need to do it is obvious to us and we know it is only a matter of time until we graduate to Gold Fleet.  For know, we are going to focus on the present, and that is having great races now, afterall some of the top ten in the world are in our fleet for the final series so we need to stay very focused and we will be successful.

Here is a shot right at the end of a gybe in some good wind.....race 2.

We're ready

It was a bit of a hack when we first got here because we didn't get our luggage and it seemed our boat took forever to get out of customs, and the whole boat shipment from Europe was kind of a mess to begin with, but it worked out and we got set up and trained pretty damn hard on and off the water.  The training regatta was a wicked addition to the camp, we had almost 30 boats, and probably 20 of the top 25 in the world competing here at the Worlds venue, so this was where we had to be.  Between that and the tuning and starting/short racing days we had with other countries, we didn't have much time to train alone, which was the plan, overall this camp was very profitable for our racing.  We are more in sync with the rudder and main, and sharper to the anticipation that is needed to really keep the flow of everything going.  It is going to be important to connect all of the gusts scattered on the course in order to do well, and we are good at that here, but I still find it better without shades which kind of worries me.  Dan has got a pair that works for him well.  We are definitely way more confident in our starts/power ups, and holding our lane, and we still have a 2 day camp that works on those things on the 30th and 31st!!  Right now we are looking forward to starting to wait our way home, the wait starts at 0645 when we get picked up to go to the airport.  See you on Sunday!

Here is a random picture I have that is a wicked shot.  Race Week!!!

By the way, we are pushing hard in every way for the home stretch in the camp, and we had a great day speed tuning and doing starts with the Danes yesterday, but a touch of me and surely Dan too, will be really looking forward to coming back for the best time of year, in one week.  We have a big day on the water tomorrow.  One of our goals for tomorrow, which worked out well yesterday, is for me to follow Dan with the rudder and main in order to keep our movements in sync, and smooth.  Anticipate.  Reacting is being late and slow.

The breeze for the next few days is going to be pretty heavy!  That is just what we need right now, and we are going to focus on getting more in sync with our movements on the rudder and main sail, and of course starts and accelerating, i'm going to try and get someone to take a shot or 2 of us with my camera, without breaking it on the water.

We had a cheeseburger each for lunch!  It was a wild ride.

Above all, we will have some GREAT racing tomorrow, and hopefully be well rested for it.  This will be our 3rd night in a row in bed at 2030, but it was quite hard to get to sleep last night.  I found out that i've been drinking whole warm milk, so no more of that.......I knew it seemed a little thick.  What's good is that Dan was able to sleep good last night which often time doesn't happen.  Before we went running at 0645 this morning, he told me that he was dreaming that there were many beautiful girls all around him on George Street!!!!!!!  See Dan's dream below!

Our accomidations are comfortable because the beds are pretty far apart....and there is two of them.  As soon as we got here we checked out the gym and it's decent considering it's a hotel gym.  We'll be doing lots of running and swimming as usual, but tomorrow in our day old boxers because our bags haven't arrived damnit!  I thought it would be a great idea to have one last smashing at nubody's and at the pool before I left, but after sitting on an airplane and in airports all day my legs feel like I owed the mafia money and didn't pay.  We really have to be careful about what we eat here because every meal is buffet style, and there is a lot of crap, but when we're on the road we always kind of naturally competing with each other to see who slips up first and eats some fat.  What Dan doesn't know is that I was killing my mom's cookies all yesterday!  

We can't wait to get our boat and start training on the water, and the Danes and Brits arrive tomorrow.  As far as our scheduel goes for the next 22 days, 0700-0900 is for running, swimming and breakfast, 0900-1700 is for sailing(briefing/de-briefing) and lunch, 1700-2030 is for biking or running and light weights, and dinner.  2030-2200 is for recovering and sleeping.  Sleep is under rated and it's just as important as sailing because it directly affects our performance, and to be honest, we don't get enough of it, and I would say neither do you.  We decided to take ZERO days off while we're here because there is no regatta, it's all training and we plan on pushing hard and sticking out even more than we already do.  Before we know it we'll be home eating turkey and drinking egg nog.

As you know, on the water training is getting less doable all the time, especially this fall!  That being said, we still manage to get 3 or 4 days a week, except for when it was almost hurricane winds for a week straight!  Since then we moved to Quidi Vidi and we can sail more there, it can get pretty hectic on the lake in its own way, but it’s good for certain aspects of training.  Saturday was pretty wild winds and shifts, and we ended up doing only one of our three drills because that was great training alone just dealing with the breeze and trying to keep the boat stable in it.  Tomorrow should be a windy day as well, but it’s going to be 12 degrees!

We have been trying to sort out the year’s logistics now as well, so more of our focus can be on performing when we’re on the road.  Last year was different because everything was unknown, but now we know what events we want to compete in, when and where to have training camps, and we know where to stay, which is very convenient.  On top of that we designed a tuning guide for our rigs, which we’re having made up at Copy Canada, we’re taking part in two Sport Canada surveys, we just submitted our Quarterly Reports to Colleen, the Canadian Sailing Teams High Performance Director, and we’re hacking away at one serious task list that Justin and Stuart have tattooed on our foreheads, it’s a good thing we’re both receding because we need the space for more tasks I think!

For our fitness, we still swim every weekday at 0745, and we have been taking advantage of the gym problem we have in this city, there’s too many.  We go to Nobody’s/Good Life, MUN gym and the Aquarena, but this week we’re using the Sport Canada Atlantic Centre, there are less people there……..it would suck if either of us got sick right now.  We are grateful that Sport Canada has given us a $2000 budget to spend on their resources, for me it will be a nutritionist, physical trainer, and sport psychologist, but secretly I want to see a hypnotist to try and get rid of my seasickness when I’m offshore.  For Dan it will be similar, but he will get physio for his back…….and he doesn’t get sea sick.

We are good to go, and very hungry for success, which we can honestly now say that we are very capable of it. 

Here are some shots of us sailing on Saturday when it was windy!!

Oceanex has supported us from day 1.  Before the campaign kicked, they shipped our boat to and from Montreal so we could compete in  the Canadian Championships.  Now Oceanex has officially joined the NL for Gold team by being one of the newest and biggest sponsors.  Thank you!  Your sponsorship is greatly appreciated, we will do the work to reach our goal in 2012 and it feels more within reach everyday.  

Christmas Day 2008, Danger Dan taking one for the team!

Qualification is done and we are sitting in silver fleet, but each day we have moved up some spots.  Yesterday we focused on starts and it was a success.  As you can see we are punching out hard......and not blag flagged.  We just got back from our morning run and it's quite cloudy, so our wind may be a little late kicking.  We don't care what the conditions are, we just want to race hard as you know what.

As for the important stuff, we had 4 races today.  Our boatspeed is great, but we need to get off the start line cleaner.  The line can't fit all of the boats, so there are 2 rows, we setup in the first row, fighting to get close to the windward boat, but tacking is not an option because the leeward boat comes to and takes the space.  There is a technique of jaming the boat to windward without tacking or moving forwards that is very quiet, but tricky to do as effectively and efficientley as we want to, especially when there are hotshots all around.  Our immediate solution is to try to stay as far away as possible from olympic medalists on the start line and get clean air, then use our speed and kick some butt.  We know exactly how to do it, but delivering today was not quite the same as talking about it in our briefing.  The good news is we are fast, and we can practice that starting technique on our own, so we can beat the hotshots with more work.  Another piece of great news is that tomorrow is a new day and we plan to make ourselves and you proud of Newfoundland and Canada.  Let's rock!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY DAD!!!!!!!!!!!

Although the wind isn't very big this time of year, all round we really like Zadar for racing and training because everyone is real nice and helpful here and they love having us around, and we are the only class here so we don't have to worry about dodging little boats all day, just some big ferry's.  Our land lady is amazing, it's very cheap where we stay, and she makes amazing food.  After sailing, we often eat soup and salad at a restaurant or in our room, thinking "we did good tonight", no pasta or pizza, but then we MUST try her pasta, cake, meat, and a lot of sweets everynight!!  Then she has this very strong homemade plum brandy that we must have after every meal. You can only politely say no twice, if she insists again then you better sit you ass down and eat and drink!  She always singles me out as well, but how much weight can I gain in a few days?  We will see.  One thing is for sure, we can't wait to get home and try Nana's apple pie on Sundays, but just a taste....please!

Tonight we are going to do our final batch of accounting, then we have a 7am run/swim, and measurment at 9.  The next practice race is at 3pm on Sunday, then it's time to race our butts off and we can't wait, but in a cool, calm and casually aggressive way, and whatever, let's go race baby.

ps.  We hope everyone is loving race week because we miss it a bit.

Good luck to everyone in Race Week tomorrow!  Hopefully you'll finally have some breeze in the Bay!

We understand it hasn't been the best day for the Canada Games athletes.  Don't worry about a thing, it's a long regatta.  We were in 8th out of 10 at the Games in 2001 and 2005 over halfway through the event!  Use today as drive to win tomorrow because that's what you deserve.  Stay confident no matter what and you will get there.  Win tomorrow and bring home those medals again! 

The Canada Games are starting up and Newfoundland has a great opportunity to make history and bring home a medal for the third Games in a row for sailing!  This time, make it a gold, you can do it!  We know you can win and i'm sure you're on the way.  Here are some quick things to keep in your minds, and we hope it helps your success.

1.  Confidence is everything and the most important.

2. Go fast, fast, boatspeed is the next most important along with acceleration. 

3. Have a plan first, then deal with the boats in order to carry out your plan, don't create your plan by dealing with boats.

4.  Truely try hard, but in a clam way no matter what goes down.

5.  Forget about it when your not in the boat park.

All in all we are looking forward to finishing our first season very strong and smart.  We are the busiest 49er team in the world this year, and we want to prove to ourselves that we can keep it intense and productive right to the second we get on the plane. 

Here is what we have taken away from today: 1.  It's good to decide where to go in the pre-start, but when the condidions are flukey, we must make the final call after the gun and we have secured a clean lane......connect the dots.

2.  At the gun, power up low, then point hard for a bit, then go right into VMG mode without applying too much horse power (trapezing too hard) because that will force us down and lose our lane.

3.  Invest and commit to where the next puff will hit, but watch for the down bursts because the sky can lie when it's unstable.

4.  Don't get any more concussions because i'm already loopy enough and my head really hurts right now.

This is a start in Medemblik, Holland, at the Delta Lloyd regatta.   As you can see there is a big sag in the middle of the line, this is common in big fleets and on big start lines.  In this situation the pin is really favoured, and it was for most of the regatta, maybe because the race committee boat owner didn't want 50 49ers fighting to start next to his yacht!!  Understandable. 

What is pressure and is it bad?  After a lot of thinking and talking with Dan, pressure is uncontrolled and wrongfully used energy.  In any line of work, to feel pressure is negative, a weight on you shoulders is never good, so it must be controlled, not relieved or erased becuase you need that kind of energy to help push yourself.  Once the "pressure" is dealt with/prevented it's no longer pressure anymore, and it never was, it's focus and motivation and anything that helps you succeed in your work.  In fact, we believe that someone who "performs well under pressure", actually doesn't because they don't feel pressure, they have already channeled the energy that would have resulted in pressure into a great performance.

Here is a downwind.

Today is another kind of squall type day so they have postponed us.  It seems to be clearing so hopefully we will get out for some good racing!  Today the focus is starting and accelration out of the maneouvers.  Like I said, we are fast, but we need to get to fast.........faster!!!  In the time it took to write this paragraph, it went from sunny to dark with a huge squall and down poor.  We hope it clears soon, we have a lot of good work to do today!!

The Olympic harbour here is huge, and there is actually a sweet gym and pool here as well for fitness.  Our first priority is to get on the water and start working hard.  Yeah of course we are going to put in a lot of hours, and train smart too, but we really need to think very carefully about what's going on in the great races and the bad ones.  We have to find out what exactly needs the most work, and be sure about it, then give it some extra attention while working on everything else.  Acceleration will certainley be one of the first to be broken down and picked apart.  It's good that we can get in the front of any fleet in a race, but we need these results overall in a regatta.  We will figure it out.  It is time to take another step up in everyway.

Today showed us that we are definitely making some serious head way and we are getting better all the time, more than we think.  My brother is right, there is no secret, all we have to do is sail hard, smart, and a lot, then we will beat the best to be the best.

Here's a shot from the other day.

Here is a picture of us when we launched with no breeze, it was blowing 15kts two minutes after this shot.  Thanks for reading.

On the water is where it all goes down for us, and we can never second guess ourselves or our setup in a race.  There has been a lot of second guessing going on about the safety of our equipment in the evenings or when traveling.  It's not because of high winds because we always have the boat tied down as if a tornado is going to hit!  We have a lot of fresh gear disgused under old tarps and stuff tied to fences, and our car and apartment jam packed.  We even woke up late night a few times worried about our equipment and drove down to the boatpark to double check everything.  Then when it was time to pack up we would spend hours tieing gear wherever we could and hope nobody would mess with it.  It was time for our setup to grow up!  Before you see that here is a quick update.

As planned, we had a day of boatwork when we got here, Riva Del Garda, Italy.  After the France event, we found our spreaders moved so we took them apart and epoxied them on.  It's been raining and 12 degrees so we made a tent out of our trailor and stuck that section of our mast in there with a hair dryer to make it cure faster.  As for the boat, she is setup again and ready to rock first thing tomorrow after our 7am jog and circuit.  The wind here is interesting, it only ever blows South in the morning, usually pretty light from 8 to 10 or 11am.  No wind until 2, then if there is sun the breeze cranks out of the North until 7pm.  It was right for directions today, but no sun so no big wind.  It's good to speak to locals for general guidelines, but as far as we're concerned, anything can happen anywhere.  For our training, we plan to spend a couple of hours a day working on boat speed, boat speed, and boat speed.  Next we'll throw in a lot of maneouvers, and then find some other teams to do some races with.  One definite thing is that we will spend more hours training here than any other team. 

Before:

After:

Now, we are in Hyres, France getting ready for French Olympic Sailing Week.  When we arrived here we had two days of boat work to do in order to get her back in regatta mode.  That included ripping our our mast step and some screws then putting some epoxy resin in there before putting it back together again.  We also repaired our wing with some carbon fibre, and fitted on our small digital compass which is already a big help and we have only used it for one day.  Today was a great day on the water.  We did some races against some of the best in the world and did some training by ourselves which was better than ever.  We were building on new techniques and working on feeling when the boat is in the groove, I even closed my eyes for a couple of minutes while we were doing 15 kts so I could get a real good feel for the balance and the helm, it was a first, and a good exercise.  Sorry to cut it short here, but I do not want to lose my work again.  Next week, we owe you a technical update, an agenda, and above all some great results!!  Thanks so much for reading and regular blogs coming as soon as we get our computer back!

From the couple of days coaching we've had to these intense races, everything clicks.  What I mean by that is when our coach shows us a different technique, it makes sense, or when we encounter new situations in the race, which is the best way to get better, it becomes clear what is best.  Although a technique or a tactical situation may be new to us, we are never lost.  This tells us that what we need to succeed is already in us.  We are certainley far from the fastest right now, but what we know for sure is we have more drive, desire, and potential than anyone in the world.  That combined with more time in the boat will take us very far.  Thanks for reading, here we go.

There has been so much prep gone into our equipment.  The first step to great results is a great setup.  Every line is perfect length, we have six settings for the mast tensions, and there is only 3mm between each one.  We even cut the carbon tiller extensions 10cm shorter!  We went out with our full race kit yesterday and it felt fast and powerful.  We are extremely happy with our coach, he is exactly what we need right now.  If we raced against ourselves in Miami, we would kick their butts!  We credit our setup and our fine tuning to our coach.  Of course we can build on it ourselves, but he got us here, and we ain't done yet.  Another good thing is that some of the best in the World are here and he can check them out, opposed to us trying to when we should be focused on ourselves.  We are ready, and are looking forward to the races that we start today.  What we want more than anything in our lives right now is to do more than what is expected of us by anyone, to make all the time and work put in by the NL for Gold Commitee well worth it, and to make every person on the NL for Gold Team know that it was a very good to put money down because they believe in us.  We have an amazing opportunity to put Newfoundland on the world class sailing map, and we must take advantage of it.  It has to start today

A cool mountain that may be easier, and less expensive to climb someday!

Getting on the ferry, but not out of Port aux Basques.

1.  Start, they are good at defending in very close quarters, and that means double tacking without moving forwards, just side to side on the start line.  Defending leeward space by pointing bow down to almost a beam reach without moving forwards, when like this the boat is dying to go really fast or tip over.  Our solution, when pivoting on the start line I do the main from the boom and Dan does the jib from the car, no sheets because in order to pivot we need fast, extreme changes in the sail trim.

2.  Upwind, they have a much steadier rig.  Our solution, continue to watch immediate gusts and lulls, but also closely watch what's coming in 15-20 seconds.  React  to the velocity change before the sails load up.  Yes it's sailing common sense, but a little more intense in this situation.  All of this fast reacting is mixed in with patience for the flow over the sails before we crank our sheets in, or we stall and hit the water.

3.  Downwind, we need to sheet in smoother as our boatspeed approaches wind speed, if we're too eager, we never get in sixth gear, but if we're too slow, the spinn luffs and we crash, and we really don't want to crash our baby after getting fixed up.  Justin, you'll be happy to know I did give a few nudges on the start line when we were in our rental!\

So you don't get bored, that's enough for now, but we wanted to let you all know that we are moving forwards all the time and are making good use out of our time on and off the water.  We must do what we said we were going to do, no matter what it takes.  Here is a photo of the boat on her side, while we were doing a rig check.  Thanks for reading, and thanks to Andrew for hooking up our website.  Robbie, can't wait to hang out when you get better!

The new carbon rig and sails suit the 49er much better than the old design.  She is super touchy on the acceleration, and sails a lot more aggressive when in the groove.  We are playing with the rig settings a lot to feel what is fastest.  As for the coach, we have been in contact with a few and I have free accomidations arranged for 9 of the 14 days we are planning to have a coach.

Here is a photo of the new setup.  Everything is bigger, stronger and weighs less.  The most obvious difference in the pic is the square top in the mainsail.

We are fully aware that starting with our first event in Europe, we will be raceing in the most competitive, and biggest fleets we have ever seen in our lives.  Raceing in these big, tough fleets will make us a lot better really fast, and the coaches we hire over the next few months will make us faster and smarter.  Something else that will be a huge help, especially with this carbon mast, that is new to most of the World, is our ability to self-coach and our ability to figure stuff out on our own.  After all, that is pretty much how we got the results we did to date.  Our independence has taken us pretty far, and it will also help us when we get coached because so far we have done it mostly alone, so when we recieve coaching we sponge up everybit.  We soak up everything when around other boats too, just at a glance on the water or walking around in the boatpark while everyone is rigging, we are checking everything out and putting it all upstairs.  Alright fine, I always carry a note pad.....even when we go out to eat incase we think of something, but often times I can't read my own writing and Dan doesn't write in English.  To sum up how we feel right now it's confident, and it always has to be right from the start, but we need a bigger Newfoundland flag.  You know where this is!!!!!

We went for a run today with a map.  Our plan was to see the Olympic stadium, which we did, see the port and a marina, which we did, and maybe run through the gothic section of the city on the way home, which we did.  We figured it would take around an hour.  No sir.  We were gone for 2 hours and 15 minutos!  Running for 2 hours of that.  Our legs feel like we owed the mob money and didn't pay it.  When we got up top like in the photo, and by the way our hotel is much lower than this, we saw a massive stadium, but we didn't go in there because we could also see the ocean and we decided to giver over there.  When we got down there, it was pretty warm, according to Dan of course, and there were huge yachts that we got as close as we could without getting arrested.  This is alright, for a power boat anyways.

That is nice, but if the owner had any sense he would sell that and buy this, or a few of these:

So, after we snapped these we kept going and encoutered too many people, but thanks to Dan, we didn't slow down.  He thought it would be good for my harsh knee to do some dodging.  Also, thanks to Dan, every single runner we encountered, even at the end of the run, we flew past like they were stopped, and they certainley looked like runners not sailors, that means they had really short shorts and belly jackets that were lower than their shorts in the back.  It was a serious run, and the gothic part of the city has the coolest buildings and alleys.

When we got back, we went to this organic buffet restaurant, with no smoking, finally, and ate the best food we've had in a while, with the exception of Nanas cooking.  It never seems like a filling idea, but a big fresh salad will fill you up in a good, fast way, not a slow you down way, so don't knock salads!!  At the end of the day, we went to the gym in the hotel and hit 50 minutes of cardio and a weight circuit.  Tomorrow is the same, but we move to a new hotel and we will run to the Olympic Marina!!  Thanks for reading!!  Make sure you read tomorrow because we have to talk about performance as everyday we are closer to our first Euro event, and the 2012 Olympics, which we think of everyday.  This is Kelly's Island!

2 funny things:  1. If you are in a public washroom in Europe make sure you take toilet paper cause there ain't any in the stall, and make sure you take the right amount or you are s**t out of luck.  Someone told me that I swear i'm not speaking from experience.

2.  Our hotel has a sweet steam room and spa and a decent gym.  Dan keeps disappearing for an hour a day and comes back more chilled out than usual, I think he goes for TURKISH BATHS in the spa, but he's got denial on his side.

Buenos Noches

NL for Gold

As some already know, we have a small piece of historical news.  We are the first Newfoundlanders ever to be selected for the Canadian Sailing Team.  It's nice to know we are moving forward and we pulled this out of our first international event which is never done!  We still have a huge mountain to climb, but now we know we are fast, and we will keep getting faster everyday.  Here is a couple of photos of where we trained alone with no coach before we qualified for Team Canada.

All that is what we do on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays we add on another gym session and swim in the evening before study time.  Saturdays are similar, but we don't start until 1000.  Sundays are for taking it easy, and meeting for just two hours to make sure we are on track and sorting out stuff we should for the next week.  Here is a picture of us coming down from Topsail Beach last summer.  Thanks to Don for snapping this one from Manuels River Point with the sweet scope on his camera!

Justin, we look forward to the training when we get home, we need the pain and i'm sure you'll give it.  Thanks to the many people who are on the NL for Gold team.  From the two members in Florida, we say thanks and we think the whole team can be pleased with our first event of the four years.  We are moving forward and up as a team everyday, so lets keep going and speed up. 

Dan and I have a lot planned for when we get back and we will let you know what we are up to in a few days!  Thanks!! 

Jon and Dan

In the meantime, we spent 5 hours packing our gear after sailing, and our Europe gear is ready to get in the container.  My brother Justin has told us that he will step up our physical training when we get back, and I think he really means it!  The better athletes we are, the better we are in this boat.  As for sailing, we still have lots to do in the few weeks we are home even though it's the middle of winter.  Besides a ridiculous amount of logistics, we need weather history on each spot in Europe, we need to study the best in any videos we can find, and we need to right down everything we can think of to improve raceing.  A few hours a day will be for sailing, without the sailing.  We're already anxious to get back at it.

Thanks for your interest!

Jon and Dan

Jon and Dan

We are working hard to get our boat to Europe although it's proving to be a little more expensive than we had hoped, but we are working it, and today is our confirmation deadline, but it looks as if we will be flying back to The Rock on Wednesday!  Dan says I will be freezing there because i've been cold here the past few days in 10 degrees, but I don't think I will because i'm going to wear a full snow suit everywhere I go!

The nutrition is weird, but it will be helpful, the most normal change is "all organic" if possible, as for the stranger stuff, wait until we get back!  Our general mentality on nutrition is if we want all the best gear, be in the best shape, and want all the best coaching, and want to get all the best results, the fuel that goes in our bodies surely has to be the best.  What is super helpful right from the start is chatting with the same guy about philosophy and mentality in the heat of competition.  We covered a lot of ground with him, and busted down a lot of doors and walls in these areas, just in an hour long chat!  He wouldn't let us write anything down for most of the chat, so we can be fully engaged in the conversation, but when we went home we put some serious points in our long term training logs.  His name is Michael Gebhardt and he has been to the Olympics 5 times for windsurfing and has a Silver and Bronze medal! He has helped us tackle areas that most people would feel harsh even talking about.  We must leave to go swimming, then sailing, then deal with shipping, then go to the gym, then confirm more stuff out of California, then hit the sack, but here is another fleet raceing photo.  We are the black chute on the right, trying to chase those Austrian 2 time Olympians, and winners of this event.  Nice work bys.

Jon and Dan

Jon and Dan

ps.  Our home made training clinic agenda coming soon, and it's gonna be intense!

Jon and Dan

Jon and Dan

What we know is that we will work harder, and train harder than anyone in the world.  We care more than anyone in the world.  We will be where we want to be and we will turn heads. Please continue to support us Newfoundland because we will do whatever it takes, and then some, to reach our goals and we will not let you down. 

Jonathan Nizar Ladha & Daniel Stuart Inkpen

Jon Ladha and Dan Inkpen

The thing is, it's much easier to stay focused when things are going smooth.  We've got nothing to hide from anybody, especially Newfoundlanders, the whole point of this blog is to take you on the entire journey with us.  We had a very bad day with repairs yesterday, nothing was going right, and  this morning we both found out that the other had a terrible nights sleep.  Your mind can race when pressure is on, deadlines aren't met, Olympic Medalists and World Champions are training all around us and we are screwing up stupid repairs and none of the shops have the right screws or tools for us to do it right.  Then over breakfast, which was a muffin and a banana in the car, we sumed up EVERYTHING we've done since September until now, and a few days of repairs is nothing, but what is something is the mindset we had last night.  Not only is everything now fixed, but we have some back up parts and she's washed, and shining and finally upright in her trolley again.  The boatpark closes at 7pm, but opens at 7am so we plan to have the boat re-assembled and ready to sail by 10am.

We want Newfoundland to know that we care way too much about our goal to ever let anything  get us down, and we fully intend on making you proud of us, from now (the beginning) to 2012 (the end).  We are learning in everyway all the time and we love and appreciate the huge amount of help that is needed from Newfoundland.  We are tweaking the way we work as we see better teams at it, but at the end of the day we must have our own way.  What we are going for overall is more effort, and more work than the next guys, we tweak for efficiencey.  What we can say for sure is we have more drive and desire and that's all because of the best place on the planet, The Rock.

Jon and Dan

Today we trained for 2.5 hours alone, then for 1.5 hours with three other boats.  By the time they got on the water, we were already really burned out, but toughing through it and staying focused when you too tired to do so is kind of what hardcore training is about, we also went for a half hour jog at 645am.  No gym tonight, Dan made health freak chili, and now we are hitting the sack.  This sounds crazy, but I feel guilty because we are sleeping in until 8 or 9am.  We are going to tone down our Cardio on Tuesday or Wednesday and rest more for the event, but we do have another sail training clinic starting Tuesday, coached again by Luthur Carpenter, the US Olympic Head Coach.  He rocks.  We took a water proof, disposible camera out today and took some photos while we were ripping!!  There are still 15 photos left on it, and who knows how they will turn out, but some will definitely be on our blog by the end of next week.  In the meantime check this out.  Good night.

Jon and Dan

This is the start of another windy day!  Not the usual for Miami this time of year, but we are thankful because we need the practice.  We made serious improvements in our tacks in our 3 and a half hour session, which was our goal for the day. The wind was getting very wild and the waves pretty big.  When the conditions are like this these boats get way more aggressive and so does the style we must sail them while still trying to be smooth and gentle.  We were very impressed and happy with our transition from 3rd gear to 6th and our confidence in heavy weather is building every minute we are out in this big wind and waves.  The only incident we had was when a massive power yacht passed fairly close to the stern of our boat, sending massive waves against the swell from the breeze.  We were going upwind into the 2-3ft wind waves while surfing a 4ft power yacht wave from the opposite direction.  Of course we saw this coming and we moved to the back of the boat, but as we plowed into the sum of the two (6-7ft) Dan went forward, and I was thrown from the very back of the boat, spun around and smashed on my back on the side of her just in front of where i'm standing in the photo above!  Thanks to Dan jumping up from his wrangled position and overpowering the force, and me holding on to the tiller (the equivelent of a steering wheel) we were able to recover without going for a even more violent swim.  The only damage done was a torn pretty white rash guard and a few painful complaints, not from Dan because I am convinced he is bullet proof .  Overall, it was a good day and we improved a lot once again from the day before.  Thanks for reading and here is a picture of us moving it upwind!  Tomorrow even more wind and hopefully we can get someone to take some downwind photos with double the speed, and double the work, fun, and improvement because that is the whole reason we are here.

Jon and Dan

Jonathan and Daniel

We go out and plant our 49er 2 boat lengths directly upwind from a mark which is usually a large channel marker so we REALLY don't want to hit it!  We work on holding it there for 1 minute and 30 seconds which is a very long time because it does not like to be still at all.  There is a lot of fore-aft and port-starboard, and we are always backing the jib and flipping the battens in the main positive and negative to keep the boat pivoting without gaining or losing ground, but she will start slipping sideways to port as we are idleing on starboard tack in general, but we can usually last for 1:30.  This is great for defending our position on the startline.  Then we reverse that sweet machine almost the full 2 boat lengths to simulate getting away from the line in an emergency situation that we will want to avoid right before a start, but we need to be good at plan B, and every boat in every class should have a plan B for their pre-start routine.  After reversing almost on our mark I bring the boat onto port tack, we regain our distance that we slipped sideways, which isn't much, and Dan quickly pulls the main in to tack us back onto starboard, we put the brakes on, then idle almost head to wind again for 30 seconds, I pull the jib on first to get the bow down and we we shoot off from hopefully directly in front of the mark we started at 3 minutes ago!  It's not over yet.  We go upwind tacking at least every 30 seconds to a pretty short windward.  We round to port and do a straight hoist, then we gybe at least every minute, but usually less, and do a straight douse and round the leeward mark to port.  Then we do the same back upwind, but do a gybe hoist, then a gybe douse at the leeward.  Back up staright hoist, straight douse, but round to starboard (we use gates in the regattas).  Then we go back up and do a gybe hoist and finally a gybe douse with a starboard rounding and that is the end of 1 set.  We try that 4 times and we drink a bottle of water each between the sets that I swear gets abosorbed into our bodies before it comes out of the bottle and we always run out before we head back to shore.  So that is what we do now when we sail alone, tomorrow morning will be the same, but tomorrow afternoon we will speed tune with a fast American boat from San Fran.

We are learning a lot and making some big changes to make us faster while we learn off many of these guys we train with.  This is only our first International event and the very start of our four year campaign and we are very fortunate to learn from people who have been doing this for over five years because many of them have.  In fact, out of all the boats in the clinic aside from one, we are the least experienced and we can't change that or say we have more because we don't.  However, we know that we are working harder than everyone, because we are running or swimming at sunrise and we know everyone else is asleep then.  We arrive at the boat park not only before the 49er sailors, but usually before anyone at all.  Dan often has to hop the fence and open the gate to let me in.  Then we run to the closest gym and punish ourselves 4-5 times throughout the week.  Then we eat so healthy it's annoying and unsatisfying.  We're from Newfoundland, we want fish and chips, but we don't have it!!  We can say we care more and we can say we work harder and if we find some team that works more than us, then we will adapt and step it up, but I suspect that may be overload which can be counter-productive and that isn't good.

We are confident that we are doing a good job so far, but we need help with something that is kind of abstract and some people may call it corny, but we don't care because we want to reach our full potential as ahletes and sailors, and we will do whatever it takes.  Someone that I trust told me years ago that up to 80% of any sport is mental, even weight-lifting.  We believe that in sailing it is definitely true and if not more, because there is so much going on with strategy, tactics, timing, reading wind gusts, shifts, wave patterns, compass bearings, calculations, predictions with the boat, race commitee, clouds, the list goes on trust me.  Let's not forget that racing the 49er VERY physical.  Here comes the weird part that Dan and I are very serious about, but we need a hand.  I have always been the most hyper, intense, energetic and some may say crazy person I know, and even though he is silent, he is violent and in many ways Dan is the same.  We are both very focused, but if we can find a way to channel everybit of that energy and mental activity that has been there forever  to 100% focus on the task at hand I truely believe it will be a breakthrough in learning and performing.  To really get 100% focus is very complex, we appreciate advice, but we are not looking for people to tell us to think happy thoughts or picture people in their underwear, or find your happy place.  We are dead serious, to 100% focus is rare in any task for anyone in the world and that is why we need serious, real and sincere help with this, way outside of the box.  Like I said, this is abstract, but we think mastering the mental game is the most important way to focus and succeed in any task in the whole world and we are NOT messing around.  Anyone and everyone, but definitely at least one person in particular (the smartest person we know in this area who's name doesn't need to be said) who has knowledge, advice and/or experience and takes this as serious as we do, and truely believes sharing what they have will help, you are welcome to comment right here, and you are welcome to call me and you are welcome to do whatever you think it will take to get your messege to us, because we are willing to do whatever it takes as well to succeed. 

Thank you all for reading our blog and being interested in us.  We look forward to seeing some different and helpful comments.  We are aware that this is a process and eventhough  we're eager, we know we have to be patient.  Throw us what you think, and we will put it all together and hopefully come up with what we are looking for.  Hopefully we can all get something good out of this one because this can be applied to any profession.

ps.  Tomorrow it's going to be WINDY!!!!! YES!!!!!!!  Pictures coming soon.

Jon and Dan.

Jonathan and Daniel

On day 2 we didn't have to get there at dawn because our boat was already setup, but we did run for a half our before dawn (6am), then we lazily swam for a bit then we stretched and had a healthy breakfast and went to the boat park to get ready for another 5 hours of training in the camp that we are greatful to be in.  Compared to yesterday we noticed a huge improvement in our sailing, and so did the fleet because we were in the front pack of boats instead of in the middle.  We are not too excited about this because it is just practice races with now 12 boats, but we are still getting better fast and our confidence is building and we eat healthy, we do fitness before and after sailing while some people are sipping Coronas, which i'm sure taste delicious here!  There is not enough hours in the day for the amount of work we do.  It's true in any profession, as long as you are rested and healthy, the more work you do, along with desire, you will eventually reach you goals and there is nothing in life that we want more than to reach our sailing goals.  Thank you for your interest in us, but we have to go swim laps, stretch, and get to sleep by 10 o'clock, because we are jogging at 6am.  PS.  Dan made one serious chicken salad for supper, but nearley killed me earlier today when he slipped 4 habenaro peppers in my sandwich!  The coach (Luthur) was debriefing us and I could hardly see him cause my eyes were watering so much!

Jon and Dan.

A HUGE Thank You to all of the people involved in anyway with the dinner and auction fundraisor at Bianca's on Saturday night!!  It was a great success and we are fortunate to be able to team up with all of you and do this together!  Thank You.