I’m afraid this post is going to be just as busy as all my others as once again I have left this update far too long and without writing anything short of a small book I won’t be able to cover everything. I will keep this update related to the location I was in rather than giving out all the miniature details in between, those will just have to stay as my own memories.
April / May: Perth – Gold Coast – Esperance
After arriving back from Nice I had two weeks to briefly catch my breath, see friends and family, catch up on all the life administration that gets forgotten when away for so long (I hadn’t been in Perth more than a week in total since October 2023!) and just enjoy the last part of west coast Autumn. I ran a weekend clinic at Freshy for some of the kids then quickly took off to the Gold Coast for a Futures Camp for three days. On arriving back I drove straight from the airport to Freshy again, this time to give a talk as the guest speaker at the Ron Tough awards night. To finish my time in WA off Elyse and I quickly got away the next day to Esperance for a lovely week seeing my family and enjoying what country living has to offer. As usual it all went too fast and we were back to Perth with me flying out late that night to Melbourne before connecting to Los Angeles again, final destination, you guessed it, Puerto Vallarta.
May / June: Puerto Vallarta – LA – Marseilles – Lake Garda – Kiel
For the second time in 4 months I was back in Mexico running another clinic. This was very different to February with the heat and humidity really up now, bringing along the breeze with it. This was just a single clinic I was running this time but I had a great attendance and an awesome mix of sailors from Olympic level, youth and masters all in attendance. We had a great time with the conditions really delivering, I can’t wait to go back again. Next stop was a quick visit to my friends the Stahls in LA to say hello and do a little coaching and a little golfing. After the quick pitstop it was off in a big bird again off to France to see Elyse. She was training and staying with Zoe in Marseille acting as training partner for Zoe leading into the games. Zoe let me crash with them for the week while I was on holidays exploring the city one last time and doing some great rides. It was a different experience not being there as an athlete after spending so much time there already and I was reminded again how much I liked the city. It’s one of the craziest in Europe I think but also one of the most fun and I hope I get to go back again one day.
Once Elyse was finished with her training it was off on the road to Lake Garda for a little refresher on the way up to Germany. Any time we can spend in Garda is cherished and this was no different. We had a charming top story apartment in Arco for 5 nights and we made the absolute most of it, living like the locals, eating lots of food and going on some amazing bike and car rides. All too soon it was back in the car though to finish off the journey North we started, making our way to Kiel over the next two days.
Nothing much changes in Kiel or at least that’s how it feels. Elyse got to work training for the event and I got to work coaching, back with the Futures boys. This time I would only have Lawson, Sam and Michael but a few extras would tag along too. The event had a classic mixed bag of conditions but the race committee did the best it could with the god awful boat park bell ringing in my dreams each night. After 10 days in Kiel it was time to move on again and in a hurry! I was off to Viana, Portugal.
July: Viana – LA
I said my goodbyes to Elyse before Annie (ILCA 6 Futures coach) and I left Kiel together on a bit of a heinous journey to get to Hamburg which included an overly long train ride and a short night in a hotel before a 4am wake up to catch a two flight hop to get to Porto before a convoluted van ride up the coast to finally arrive at a french speaking ladies apartment that smelt like your grandmas house! It was a crazy 24 hours but Annie, Amelia (another Aussie ILCA coach) and I all made it and got stuck into our coaching for the U21 World Championships. It was my second time coaching the U21 worlds and I had a great team to work with of Lawson, Isaac, Jack and Eddie. We knew the venue had a reputation for strong wind but it’s quite often that these venues don’t deliver what you expect. The ILCA 4s that were racing when we arrived were really struggling for wind with heavy fog some days making racing impossible. For our event however the venue really delivered with great breeze and big waves making for a really physical race track. The sailors handled themselves well considering it was two 80 boat fleets making up the race track with plenty of carnage at the starts and top marks. Only on the final day we saw a change from the usual NW breeze we had been experiencing when we had a light southerly breeze with large swell against the wind. This really spiced things up, putting extra pressure on the sailors as no one knew what to expect in these conditions. In the end Isaac wound up 8th overall, Eddie 12th, Jack just behind in 13th and Lawson in 25th. Each of the boys experienced a different set of highs and lows through the racing and I’m sure they’ll be taking some good lessons going forwards from this experience.
Once again, I had no time to stop. I packed my bags late into the night after the final day of racing, then woke up early to get a taxi back to Porto airport to jump on a quick flight to London before taking off to Los Angeles once again. How many times have I been there this year alone?
This time I was running a training camp for a bunch of ILCA 6 girls in Long Beach similar to what I had done earlier in the season. I’m really starting to like Long Beach, it has a pretty funny vibe but the sailing is quite good and you can get out training pretty much every day which is awesome. I finished this training camp off with the Olympic Classes Regatta that ABYC was running which will only get bigger in the years to come. We had a mixed bag of conditions, mostly moderate seabreeze but a light final day to mix it up.
Once the event was over I went straight into three days of private coaching that was a bit unexpected but great fun nonetheless. I had a day with 4 youth sailors, two of whom I had worked with before then two more days with 2 youth sailors that I was getting to know. I had quite the drama on the first day with my RIB breaking down right in the middle of the busy LA harbor channel with a tanker coming right for me but other than that the training went great and we all had a good time.
After all this coaching (Kiel, U21 Worlds and Long Beach) I was feeling pretty cooked! I returned for a few days with the Stahls for some much needed R&R and Tony took me up to Santa Barbara for the day which was such a cool experience. I’ll never forget that day. It was only 4 days but it made all the difference before I finished off this worldwide coaching journey, final destination, Traverse City Michigan.
August: Michigan – Perth
I arrived in Traverse City in the middle of a heat wave as everyone was eager to tell me with temperatures peaking in the high twenties! Traverse City airport was one of the stranger airports I had been to with carpet and wood paneling everywhere but I was greeted quickly by Chad who picked me up and took me straight out to dinner in the charming city. It was completely packed out, I couldn’t believe how busy every restaurant was but we finally found somewhere nice to sit and catch up. I was here to coach him as well as his friends and some of the kids in the community as well, I immediately liked the vibe of the place as it reminded me a bit of my country roots back in Esperance. Chad had an amazing house that I was staying in and we got to launch his ILCA and my coach boat right off the front of his place. Traverse City was broken into two bays as part of the greater lake Michigan (part of the Great Lakes system), East and West bay. We were based on the more secluded East bay and as the word spread more that I was coaching there more and more people started joining in with the sessions. We ended up by the end of the camp with 6 or so boats out training in the beautiful freshwater lake.
I also shared my time in the town at the TACS center, the community learn to sail facility, on a small body of water called Boardman Lake. It was a tiny puddle compared to the big lake but made for very secluded sailing and a great learning environment. I taught the kids for two mornings there which was great and even though the boats were some of the oldest I had ever seen we still managed to get them up and moving around the lake. To cap off my time there I even did the Tuesday night club race on the lake in an old ILCA 4 which was a hoot! Then, all too soon, it was time to head home after 3 months away and 6 different countries on two continents. It had been the longest I had been away from Elyse since we had started dating so I was very happy to be going home to her.
Perth – August & onwards
After getting back I only had a few days to settle in and get over my jet lag before I was back out on the coach boat again, this time for client and now friend Alif from Indonisia. He had contacted me 6 months earlier through instagram out of nowhere and I had thought nothing of it but he kept asking about training and if I would coach him. Finally I took him seriously and he came all the way out to Fremantle with his family to do a two week training camp with me one on one. I really didn’t know what to expect but as we did more and more work together I started to get to know him as a sailor much better and we got some really good work done in conditions he had never seen before! Perth really put on a show with front after front hitting us with some days the wind being upwards of 30 knots all day. Alif stepped up to the challenge though and embraced the tough weather. He goes into his big competition this week so I wish him the best of luck.
Now I just get to enjoy some time at home with a much clearer calendar which is lovely. The weather has just turned a corner with the sun coming out and I think I might go golfing. Until next time ✌️