Matt Foskett - Braassemermeer International Regatta
After sailing my Optimist dinghy in the three major events of the year (the Inland, End of Season and National championships), I was ranked in the top 30 sailors in the UK. This meant that I was selected for the Braassemermeer International Easter Regatta (Braassemermeer for short), a large event taking place on the massive Braassemermeer Lake in Holland. Over 240 sailors from Europe and the US took part, over six days and 12 races.
Having seen the weather forecast for over 20 knots of wind, I knew that being one of the lightest sailors, this would be a difficult and challenging event. However, I wasn't going to let this stop me having a fun and exciting experience, and along with the rest of the UK team I went to Braassemermeer early for two days of professional training (with three experienced coaches) organised by our class association IOCA.
On the first day the wind was even stronger than expected, but after a short wait the racing went ahead anyway. I brought up my courage and set off. Thankfully the wind began to calm down during the race, and I found myself in first place. Unfortunately there were a few difficult wind shifts near the end of the race, and I lost a few places on the final leg, but I was still happy with my result. The next morning we woke up to two inches of snow and gale force winds, and sailing was abandoned for the morning while the sailors had an international snowball fight. We managed to sail in the afternoon, despite temperatures lower than -15 with the wind-chill.
On the final day, the wind dropped to more manageable amounts and we were split into gold, silver and bronze fleets depending on our results. My races had not been as good as they were on the first day, but I still managed to get into the gold fleet. The last two races had to be good ones. Thankfully my determination paid off and I had two good races on the final day, giving me a final result roughly in the middle of the gold fleet. I had survived sailing in very hard conditions, and achieved a result I was happy with.