All Olympic Champions have gathered at the IJssellake in the Netherlands. Torben Grael from Rio de Janeiro with 5 Olympic Medals under his belt, Robert Scheid with only a few less and Percy from the UK the current champ. The upcoming week we will have 11 races. I will prepare for a humbling experience. Most of them have sailed already 100 days this year and I did just one!
When I was bringing my boat today I was thinking how many times I have raced in Medemblik in my life. I started in the Flying Dutchman 23 years ago? Sitting on the shore because the wind was blowing ‘the shit from the dike,’ as we say in Dutch. Only the dare devils went out and that wasn’t us in those days. 10 years later we were one of the dare devils and became World Champion. That was something I never thought of being possible to happen.
Now I hardly sail but still learn so much from it. This time -when running over the beach to have at least some exercise- my intention is to connect to the wind in a new way. Try to understand what she is telling me. Sounds pretty spiritual and vague but you need to have some goal if you can’t excell in boatspeed, boathandling or physical fitness. Might be nice to experiment with. The app ‘Windguru’ is telling me that there will be a lot of wind the upcoming week and that won’t make life easier. Usually there is more panic than listening in the boat when the shit is blowing from the dike… I might inquire into why I want to sail this boat and don’t go for a local regatta with a local class where I even could win the races. How come that I want to sail against the top of the world and feel shit afterwards that I didn’t do better and don’t start to sail more?
Have fun, I’ll be in bed early.