Learning and Leading in Long Beach
As I continue through another summer of iQFOiL training, I find myself back in our yearly training site: Long Beach. Long Beach is one of my favorite destinations primarily because of the family in the area and this time I got to stay with my Great Uncle and Aunt, a real treat! My sister and her boyfriend also live in the area, and I love getting to see them while I’m training. Additionally, this year Long Beach delivered with days upon days of great windsurfing conditions.
Long Beach is known for its sea breeze which brings what are known as champagne conditions, when the breeze is about 13-16 knots and the water is just perfect, and our whole training block had these amazing conditions. During the training block, we primarily sailed outside of the breakwater which allowed us to access the Pacific’s swell. Despite not being very large, the small waves added great value to the training as they require more technique and focus. We worked a lot on upwind speed, but I was personally very focused on becoming more comfortable at pushing the limits of speed downwind and reaching. At an iQ ODP camp several years ago, Gonzalo (a professional windsurfer and now the iQ Class President) told us to always “keep it scary” on the downwinds as that is the only way to be going fast. When the kit is reaching its optimal speed downwind, it becomes unstable and simply, just scary. Therefore, it takes a lot of practice to keep pushing my comfort zone and hence, my speed downwind.
We also did a lot of practice races which were particularly valuable because the US youth were training with us so there were more boards on the water. I found myself feeling more confident racing and having more clean races. In the past few months, I have also been focusing a lot on clean racing which I define as not making egregious technical errors. I would constantly find myself losing races due to a fall or a bad maneuver, so, I worked hard to improve my consistency and saw some results in Long Beach. During the practice races, I found myself sailing cleanly which is a huge improvement for me.
After the training block ended, I had one rest day that I spent with Maverick who flew out to visit me during the training and regatta. It was so nice to get to spend some time with him and see some of LA. On the one rest day, we went to Manhattan Beach, the Peterson Automotive Museum, Venice Beach, and got dinner with my sister and her boyfriend!!
Then the US Open Sailing Series event in Long Beach started up. The event was primarily comprised of the youth and women I had been training with but was three days long with a real race committee. On the first day, we did one slalom race and four course races in breeze from 8-14 knots. I sailed a consistent and clean day with essentially only one strategic error which I was very pleased with. Then on day two, there was, unfortunately, no wind, so we only waited onshore and on the water. Finally, on the third and final day, we did extremely light (3-8 knots) slalom racing. I was very pleased to see how much I have improved in these conditions over the last month, and it showed in my racing. I finished the event in first place, also winning the Gilbert Wagner Memorial Perpetual trophy which was a great way to end the Long Beach block before heading back across the pond to Marseille!
