Detroit Cup Day 3

After a letting the results get a bit out of our hands, we had a stressful time watching the matches play out from shore but have made our way into the quarter finals and will be pushing hard towards the top for the rest of the day and tomorrow. The event is being live streamed at http://www.detroitcup.com/detroitcup/dcup_live.cfm

EDIT: Unfortunately due to a format change the quarter finals will not be sailed - we finished the event in 8th.

Detroit Cup Invitation!

Based on our performance at the Bayview Spring Invitational the team has been invited to a grade 2 event at BYC. This will be a big challenge for us but we are looking forward to testing our skills against more of the best!

Stoltze Cup

Still on the road, this time we took on some sailing legends (Dave Perry and Terry McLaughlin!) in the Great Lakes Challenge Cup at Rochester Yacht Club. Sailed in privately owned boats and always supplied with refreshments, Rochester did an incredible job of running this event smoothly. After an inhospitable start time the team of Lance, Roby, and Oliver were able to get off to a good start taking races from highly ranked Magnus Sandberg and Dave Perry as well as Jason Carminati, the skipper of the US team for the FISU games. Landing ourselves tied for 3rd after the first two days we were feeling good. Instead of finals Sunday continued with round robin to keep everyone sailing and have the most fair result. Due to Lance's absence the teams performance fell somewhat but rookie skipper Clifton did have his first match racing win. Another great practice regatta and we're feeling even better about the WUC in September.

Bayview Yacht Club

This weekend Lance, Clifton, and Oliver made the trip to Detroit for their first event as a team. The Bayview Spring invitational is a qualifier for Detroit Cup and in this case was full of youth sailors. It was good to see many people from the collegiate circle we are all familiar with. After the first day of racing our team had landed 1st seed and sailed the semi finals against 4th place, netting a position in the finals and had high hopes after going 2-0 against the 2nd place team. Unfortunately the second day we ended up in 2nd after a tough day of light and shifty conditions in fairly strong current. It was a great warm up for our regatta next weekend and BYC was incredibly hospitable. Thanks so much to our host and to BYC.

Training week in Berumda

The team getting ready to start, or perhaps finished sailing.

Eight Queen's Sailing Team members flew to Bermuda over our reading week to keep our skills up in the off-season. The weather was beautiful although we were there for the coldest day they'd had so far. Every day was over 15ºc, with 20-30kts. Although a little windy for practicing match racing (enough to break an old J24 boom) it was great all-around training, and good to start setting up a team dynamic. RHADC was extremely accommodating, letting us use their boats for the trip and get out sailing 4 straight days. A big thanks to RHADC, the coaches that came out to help, and our amazing hosts/hostesses who kept us well fed and out of the rain! Most importantly we managed to fill all our time with sailing or exploring the island making it an excellent 'reading week'. We're looking forward to heading back there for a week before the event in France and hopefully train in International One Designs. Now that we're back the search for funding begins!

The whole group at Horseshoe Beach.

Approved!

We got the official word today that CICSA has chosen the Queen's mens match racing team as one of the schools representing Canada at the World University Championships. We're all extremely excited to finally have the good news after so much planning and anticipation. With this as a go-ahead, we will be kicking off our fundraising and making solid arrangements. Thanks CICSA! You can keep up on twitter right here or at https://twitter.com/#!/QueensKeelboat.

New Year Announcements

The New Year has kicked our program up a gear with the addition of a new bowman: Oliver Neal. On top of our weekly strategy sessions and meetings, the team will be travelling to Bermuda over reading week for an intense five-day training session at their World Match Racing Tour Venue! The Queen’s female team will be joining us in Bermuda for the week, which will be a great addition to our training. Meanwhile, our team resume has been submitted to CICSA for verification, and we are eagerly awaiting their decision.