A Month in Marseille

We have just finished up a month in the future Olympic venue, Marseille, France, and we are brimming with excitement. This full month of intensive preparation has been nothing short of transformative, propelling our team closer to our ultimate goal of Olympic success. What better motivation than to train on the future Olympic race course.

This past month by the numbers:

Days on the water: 20

Hours on the water: 66.5

Even accounting for several days of traveling and transporting boats across Europe, we managed to put in a massive chunk of time on the water this month. We were fortunate to be supported by some very high caliber coaches as well this month to make the most of our time. Massive thank you to Morgan Reeser and Luke Patience for your invaluable lessons and expertise!

Our training was centered around four different "coach run" regattas, which are essentially informal training regattas run by the 470 coaches. Marseille is split up into 4 different course areas for the Olympics, and during these events we had racing move around so we could get a taste for each course area and how they differ. It's invaluable to get to train in the Olympic venue during a similar time period to when the Olympics will take place next year, as weather patterns are quite unique to each venue. We got to see everything Marseille had to offer, seeing the broad range of conditions on each race course. A lot of days in the sea breeze, some light and variable days, and some epic mistral days!

With each regatta we had a different focus. With the help of our coaching expertise we were able to do a bit of equipment testing with the new masts we've purchased since breaking our one and only mast at the Europeans last month. Lots of progress on that front, and we were also able to make a lot of gains with our starting, general upwind speed, and also our downwind pumping technique. Overall though, having time to familiarize ourselves with the Olympic venue was such a blessing and we look forward to spending more time here soon!

In addition to our rigorous training schedule on the water, we managed to fit in quite a bit of productive cross training and exploration of the beautiful city of Marseille. The massive mountain overlooking the Olympic water served as a great playground and training area for us. We also spent some time exploring the local gyms, coffee shops, and boulangeries! It was such an experience to live and train in the future Olympic city. Trevor and I both feel like it's ignited a fire of determination for us both to be back here this time next year. Going for training runs overlooking the medal race course, just makes you visualize what it will be like in a years time when the sea walls will be crowded by spectators watching the best in the world vie for Gold. Fueling our dreams when we fall asleep at night, that's for sure.

What's next?

While we will not be competing in the Test Event this upcoming week, we are not stopping training. We are resuming training in the UK with our training partners to continue progressing on our goals before the upcoming World Championship in August!

In our previous newsletter, we expressed our frustrations with our equipment (or lack thereof!). We have been able to make significant progress on this front, and we are excited to share that we have been able to secure a much newer hull to use for the Worlds! We used it for the last 2 coach regattas in Marseille and it's astounding to feel the difference of a stiffer hull! We are confident this was the right move for our team, and while the costs were high, we think this is a necessary investment for our team to be able to compete at the highest level.

It was difficult to make ends meet this past month, especially with adding the cost of a new boat to our expense list. It's worth it to make these sacrifices though, and we are giving everything we have in the final push towards the World Championships in the Hague. Being able to spend an entire month in Marseille was no easy feat, and we would not have been able to do so without the generous support of our sponsors! Thank you for believing in us!

If you'd like to make a contribution to our team to help support our efforts click here to see how! We accept tax deductible donations through the generous support of the Sailing Foundation of New York, and also can receive money directly through either PayPal or our GoFundMe page!

That's all for now! Please stay tuned for more updates and photos throughout the next couple weeks both on facebook & instagram, @nb470racing as we kick off training in the UK in the lead up to the Worlds!

Europeans Recap + Help Keep Us Afloat!

We are currently training in the future Olympic waters in Marseille, France. There are a series of 4 coach run regattas taking place this month, and so we are taking full advantage of training at the Olympic venue while we have it. Here's a recap of our most recent event:

Europeans Recap

The Europeans took place in San Remo, Italy from May 12-20, 2023.

After our last event, the Princess Sofia Regatta in Palma, Spain, we sat down as a team and reconfigured our goals and aims based off of the event. Our biggest areas for improvement were starts. We felt that it was this the key element we were missing in Palma that kept us from racing at the front. We set into training with these goals in mind and worked heavily on our starts and downwind pumping technique. We were really happy with the progress we made as a team and felt like we made some leaps with our starting maneuvers and time and distance to the line.

We arrived in San Remo and got straight into training. Each venue we race at is different in regards to the breeze, wave patterns, and currents and so its always advantageous to get to a venue early and become familiar with it before heading into an event. We had several days to get used to the unique conditions and of course carbo-load with some fresh Italian pasta!

Cycling through the tunnels along the Mediterranean shoreline on our rest day. Cafe stop in Imperia. The entrance of our accommodation. Favorite pasta dish from the best Italian restaurant in Italy!

We were feeling really happy with our boat speed and starting improvements going into the event. Our training days were mostly light wind, up to around 12 kts. There were thunderstorms practically every day which didn't make for the most stable wind conditions.

Going into day 1 the forecast was looking marginal. The breeze filled late in the day, and after a brief delay we had some time waiting on the water before starting the first race. Good start off the middle of the line and we were off, marginal O-flag conditions (wind was +10kts average which means we can use unlimited kinetics), and Trevor was full force into pumping upwind. We had a nice start next to the Italians and Swedes and held with them for the whole upwind, rounding the top mark in 3rd. Full pumping downwind, we reeled them in and made a small gain on the downwind from nailing a wind shift. Approaching the bottom gate mark we jibed on the Swedes and they split from us at bottom gate. It was all very close. Next upwind, Trevor went to work again pumping upwind to propel the boat forwards. We kept playing up the right side of the course and managed to keep the lead on the Swedes going into the top mark, but the Portuguese were close behind. On the final downwind we got caught up with the Portuguese while the Swedes got free. They managed to pass us on the inside, but we finished the race close behind in 2nd. The next race we didn't manage to get free and ended up on the wrong side of a 50 degree lefty. A near first and a near last place finish.

The conditions the next few days were heavily influenced by some unique weather patterns. There were two wind systems on either side of San Remo, and we were caught in a vortex between the competing winds. It made for a lot of waiting, and a lot of interesting conditions. Day 2 we were out on the water for hours on end, started and abandoned several races, but ultimately didn't finish any. We managed to break our tiller in the massive swell, and so it turned into a very long day for us.

Day 3 we got some great conditions. 12-18kts from a skewed offshore direction. Shifty and puffy. We had some good races and were happy with our tiller repair. The velocity in race 3 of the day picked up, and while sailing downwind our mast snapped in half at the spreaders. This was our first time having a break of this kind happen to us during a race, especially frustrating since we had been doing well and didn't do anything "wrong" for the break to occur that we could notice.

We still managed to scrape into gold fleet despite the mast break. This was our only mast, and so luckily we were able to borrow a mast from our teammates Stu McNay and Lara Dallman-Weis, but as we had never used it before, our settings were pretty out of whack on Day 4 of the event.

Gold fleet racing was challenging. When we managed to get good starts, we were typically able to come to the top of the course well. Unfortunately we were BFD in race 1 of gold fleet, and afterwards entered a more conservative starting mode that did not work. Paired with our settings being completely thrown off from switching to a new mast, we weren't feeling confident ultimately. Training in big waves and breeze was something we have been lacking, as it's tough to find those conditions in Miami on a consistent basis. The end of the Europeans highlighted an area of training we desperately need to work on to become more well rounded competitors in the 470 fleet.

I am proud we managed to hold our heads high. We were put in some tough situations

throughout the event. I recall as Romain Bonnaud was towing us in with our mast bent in half hanging over the boat, he turned around to take a photo and Trevor gave him a happy thumbs up. While it was a terrible situation, we didn't react too negatively, and just went with the punches, doing what we could to best improve the situation at all times. Controlling what we can control and not getting too worked up about things out of our control. I'm very grateful to my teammate, Trevor, for bringing such a great attitude to what was a very challenging event for us. It's easy to crumble, get agitated, and react with anger in such high stress situations, but Trevor ended every day with a smile on his face.

A massive thank you to our friends, family, supporters, as well as St. Francis Sailing Foundation and the Sailing Foundation of New York for providing us the support to get to the Europeans! We couldn't do it without you.

What's next? New Boat for the Worlds!

The biggest thing on our minds after completing the Europeans is that we need newer equipment. Upon our arrival in Marseille we had about 4 days of continuous boat work and epoxy repairs to get the boat back into practice condition after racing it hard at the Europeans.

A mentor to us put things nicely, "you should be spending all of our time and energy training hard on the water and in the gym, not doing epoxy repairs and making phone calls." It is one of the challenges with Olympic campaigning, especially in the United States. It becomes difficult to set your priorities. Ultimately right now, fundraising is becoming the most important thing for us. Being able to afford new equipment is our biggest priority. We do not want to lose more races due to equipment failures.

We are only 6 months out from our Olympic trials. The World Championships taking place in the Hague, Netherlands on August 11-17 will be the first chance to qualify the nation for the Olympics... and currently the only boat we have is sinking. The best chance to perform well and qualify the country will be to have newer equipment. The boat we have been using is a 2014 Ziegelmayer, which while functional is not capable of delivering top results. We used it at the Europeans and had several major breakdowns throughout the event, which cost us many points and even led to a DNF in one race. This is incredibly frustrating given the amount of time, energy, and resources we have put into this campaign and being able to give it our best shot; it’s disheartening to have your equipment fail you. When looking at the boats racing in the gold fleet, everyone is using a 2020 boat or newer. To be competitive in the gold fleet, we need a newer boat. We need to be able to put all of our time and energy into performing well and making the boat go fast, not keeping it in one piece. That is why we are reaching out now to anyone and everyone who would be willing to make a contribution.

How to help:

To make a quick donation online we have a GoFundMe page set up:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/NB470-to-Paris

We are partnered with the Sailing Foundation of New York, and so we can accept tax deductible donations via check:

Tax deductible donations can be mailed to:

Sailing Foundation of New York, PO Box 124 Rye, NY 10580

Check payable to: Sailing Foundation of New York

Memo: Nordstrom/Bornarth

Click here to be redirected to our team website and learn more.

Marseille Training Update

For now, we continue to practice hard here in Marseille on the future Olympic Waters. We just completed the first two of four coaches regattas, and finished as top American in both. We're excited to be acquiring some new equipment before the Worlds in August! Stay tuned for more updates and be sure to follow us on social media @nb470racing for more frequent updates!

Upcoming events:

- Marseille Coach Regatta 3 - June 21-23

- Marseille Coach Regatta 4 - June 26-28

- Combined World Championship - August 11-17

Back from Palma and Hungry For More

After many twists in the road, we made it to Palma!

Splashing time during training! @alchenard

Wind, waves, and sunshine. What more could a sailor ask for? As we hoisted sails and launched our boat in the clear blue waters on the island of Mallorca, I couldn’t help but smile. It was a long road for us to get here, especially this year.

As we divulged in our previous newsletter, our team has faced some significant challenges recently. Our biggest sponsor throughout our campaign shifted strategies… and after our test event qualifiers ended in February, Trevor and I were left with no equipment and no funding to continue with our campaign. This put us in a tough position considering we are less than a year out from our Olympic trials and we pretty much needed to restart our campaign from scratch. It made us reconsider everything. Why are we doing this? Is it worth it? Is it possible? Our final conclusion…. Yes. We are all in.

And so Trevor and I got to work, harder than ever to restructure and reframe our campaign. We knew we never wanted to be put in this position again, and so a big priority for us going forward is to have complete ownership of our campaign at all levels. Luckily with the bit of money Trevor and I could scrape up between the two of us, we managed to get possession of a boat, and pack it up and put it in a container in time to make it to Palma. We had no sails and the boat was missing a lot of pieces... but we knew we could figure it out. That was the motto. We’ll figure it out.

In March after shipping the only 470 equipment we owned in a container from Miami to Barcelona, we had no equipment to train on and were forced to get creative. While we scoured Miami to assemble a 470 to use, we did some coaching, trained and competed in other sailboat classes, and continued to work hard in the gym. What we thought would be a period of no sailing turned into a lot of hours on the water, learning from a different perspective from what we have been used to these past two years.

Louisa sailing Waszps in Pensacola. @tybaird

Louisa got some foiling time in the Waszps at the American Magic training base in Pensacola, and also competed in the Etchells class for the first time and finished in 3rd place overall at the Etchells Midwinters. Trevor finished 4th driving at the Snipe Midwinters in Key Largo with his sister Katie, and was chosen as one of a select few coaches to train the top youth teams at the legendary CISA clinic. There is so much to learn in the sport of sailing, and we've both appreciated the time we've had to explore different avenues of the sport and bring it back to the 470. I think this time has been really valuable to us and allowed us to see the sport of sailing through a different lens.

3rd place finish at the Etchells Midwinters with Big Dawg Racing!

Trevor and his sister Katie finishing 4th at the Snipe Midwinters

Thanks to the help of many friends and mentors, we were able to get a boat pieced together to train with in Miami and managed to get 10 days on the water in the beginning of March training with the US 470 squad before heading off to Palma for the Princess Sofia Regatta. A huge thank you to Stu McNay, Nikki Barnes, Dave Hughes, and Lara Dallman-Weis for helping us get a boat together to practice with. We couldn't have done it without you. After this productive training block, we shipped it over to the Spanish island of Mallorca for some more training before the start of the event.

Super coach Steve Keen filming our starts from every angle.

Once we arrived in Palma we had quite a lot of work ahead of us to get the boat race ready. We spent the first few days practically living at the boat park doing repairs, replacing parts, and getting the boat tuned to our liking. We had no tool box when we first arrived, but thanks to our friends in the 470 fleet we were able to scavenge the correct tools to get the job done. It's a beautiful thing in the sailing world. You travel around to all of these events, training and competing against the same people. Some of your biggest competition turns into some of your closest friends, and fortunately for us, our friends really came through for us to help us get our ship up to speed. After countless hours giving our boat the love she deserves, our beautiful vessel, Lisa, was ready to go.

Princess Sofia Regatta

At this year's 52nd Princess Sofia Regatta there were a record number of boats in comparison to previous years. 72 boats, split into 2 fleets for 5 days of racing, plus a medal race. The conditions this year were spectacular, especially when compared to last year's blistering cold and stormy conditions. Sunny clear blue skies and a consistent sea breeze for practically every day of training leading up to the event. Couldn't ask for much more. Unfortunately this didn't carry into the 1st day of the event, and we spent most of the day postponed, starting some racing and abandoning them shortly after. The real first day of racing was day 2 of the event, and we started off strong. A decent start tacking off to the right early with a consistent right shift throughout the beat. Rounded the top mark in 3rd and picked off a few boats throughout the race to finish in 1st. It was a great feeling. This was what we were working towards. All the struggle to get to this event was worth it for moments like this.

Unfortunately we weren't able to match that going into the following races. We struggled to get off the starting line and played things too conservatively. The next day we strung along a similar series of races. We had great speed, but we didn't give ourselves enough opportunities in the race by holding ourselves back at the start. Luckily we scraped by well enough to get ourselves into gold fleet where we got some great quality racing in. One highlight was leading a gold fleet race until the final downwind where we got a yellow flag penalty on the last downwind leg of the race. Some highs and some lows. It’s impressive to see how the level of sailing in the fleet is picking up as we get closer and closer to the Olympics. The caliber of the fleet this year as compared to last year is significantly different. A lot of great lessons learned when up against such great opponents, it definitely highlights your weak spots quickly.

Downwind pumping in the Palma seabreeze.

We finished up the event in 22nd overall. We've already started another training block and it's been great to approach training with new goals and areas for improvement based on this event. Ultimately we are so glad the pieces fell into place to allow us to go and compete in this event. It was such a great experience to go and compete with our new mindset and campaign setup, squeezing every ounce of value from each day. A massive thank you to our coach Steve Keen and our quality training partners Stu McNay and Lara Dallman-Weis for making it so enjoyable.We're happy to be pushing the level of 470 sailing in the United States together.

What’s next?

We’re doing some domestic training in Miami, our future Olympic trials venue, before heading off to San Remo, Italy for the 470 European Championship in May. Working together with Stu & Lara has been an extremely fruitful learning opportunity for us. Having the ability to push each other in practice has been invaluable. We look forward to continuing to make improvements alongside them with the guidance of our coach Steve Keen before competing against the international fleet again. We hope to be packing a bigger punch leading into the Euros.

Upcoming summer schedule:

• Domestic training in Miami before heading to Europe

• 470 European Championship - San Remo, Italy (May 15-20)

• Coaches regattas and training - Marseille, France (the Olympic venue)

• Domestic training - Newport, RI in prep for Worlds

• Allianz Sailing World Championship - The Hague, Netherlands (August 10 -20)

We need your support

A massive thank you to our friends, families, and supporters for all of your gracious support to get us this far. Additionally we'd like to thank the New York Sailing Foundation and St. Francis Yacht Club for backing us. We couldn’t have made it to Palma without you and we are so grateful to have such a broad network of people supporting us and believing in us. The journey is far from over. We need more help to continue pushing forward. We are making so much progress as a team in this new chapter, but we don't have the resources at the moment to get things done. Now more than ever we're asking for your help so that we can represent the United States at the upcoming World Championship this summer in the Hague, and have a chance at qualifying the country to the Olympics. Click here to see our GoFundMe and make a quick donation. Everything helps.

DONATE

Additionally if you'd like to make a tax deductible donation through the New York Sailing Foundation, please click here for more information.

Stay tuned for more team updates, and follow us on social media to keep up with the latest @nb470racing. As always if you'd like to reach out to us to chat feel free to contact us:

louisanordstrom@ussailingteam.org

trevorbornarth@ussailingteam.org