By the scores posted by CICSA after fleet race nationals, it was unclear whether McGill was in first or second, and in order to secure that first place spot the team decided to send four of us to Vancouver to participate in match race nationals. Not very many people on the team have match racing experience and the event was during midterms, so we ended up being two first years from Vancouver (Ruby and Marg) then a third year skipper (Tessa) and me.
None of us have really had keelboat experience before, or match racing experience, so we had a couple of clinics with a champion keelboat racer in Montreal who kind of told us what to expect, although having never match raced and never been on a keelboat before it wasn’t as helpful as it could of been.
Thursday we took off right after our classes and flew Montreal to Vancouver, landing around 8:30pm. We then separated off at the airport to which Vancouver resident we’d be staying with – I was with Marg and Tessa was with Ruby.
The next morning we headed down to the yatch club bright and early at 7am since we had to do our check in and weigh in. We had managed to come one day late since when we had booked our flights the full event details hadn’t come out yet, so most of the other teams had showed up a couple days ago and gotten some practice, but we were showing up for the first day of racing and figuring out the boat. We passed weigh in easily (which was a worry for me – limit was 180lbs) then got around to rigging our boat. None of us had ever rigged an Elliot before so it took a while and asking people around the club to help us rig it.
There was no wind, but we really wanted to get out on the water so we could figure out how to fly our spin. After waiting around for a little bit and hearing conflicting opinions on whether we could go out or not, we were finally allowed to go out, even though the race was still off. We headed out and got out into the bay, and at that point they decided to start racing since they saw we were out there and moving.
It was a fun first day of sailing once we figured out how to move the boat around and we were getting better each race, even though we didn’t end up winning any matches. By the end of the day we could get the spin up and down which was what we had been hoping for. Spirits were high and we went to Cactus club for dinner afterwards.
Second day we got there early again, but there wasn’t much wind so we didn’t end up going out until around noon. Had a bunch of matches this day but didn’t end up winning any, so we finished the series with all losses, although there were a couple that were close. The wind was also light and shifty most of the day which wasn’t all that fun and made it kind of hard to fly the spin. Morals were fairly low going into the social dinner, and then we went to go get ice cream after.
Third day was optional for anyone who wasn’t in the final bracket, but they said they would run fleet racing for those who weren’t and we still wanted to sail so we came. They sent us out nice and early even though there wasn’t much wind since they wanted to get the races over as quick as possible so people could get back to where they were coming from. It started out light, died, and then the wind did a full 180 and started picking up intensely. We had a lot more fun this day, partially because there was wind for the first time, but also because we won all the fleet race matches. It was our chance to prove that yes we can sail, it was just the type of racing since we’d never match raced before.
We got sent in around noon because it started to get really windy, but the finalists still had a couple of matches to run and so they stayed out. By the time they came in the weather had fully changed and was storming – we saw lasers turtling in the bay and not able to come up.
The yacht club’s high school laser team with Marg’s brother on it ended up winning the event which was a whole thing with CICSA since it was supposed to be a college event, however they had been winning the whole weekend so it was kind of expected.
My parents had come up to watch me sail (and have a nice weekend in Vancouver) so we had lunch with them (thanks mom and dad) then we decided to try and do a “hike” since Tessa had never been out west before. We went to Lynn Canyon and saw the suspension bridge there since we were too poor to afford the $60/each Capilano suspension bridge. It was pretty cool, Tessa was impressed by the trees and the rest of us were just like “oh this is like our backyard.”
Woke up nice and early Monday morning to try and stay on Montreal time, did some lectures for a bit until we headed to the airport and got back to Montreal around 7pm, where I went straight to the library to study for my midterm the next day.
Overall was a great sailing trip and we are all excited to go back and do more keelboats next fall, especially since we now know how to fly the spin.