Warden Park’s Year 10 pupil Bea West was recently selected to represent Great Britain in Italy. Here she recounts her experience for Cuckfield Life.
By Bea West
I am sitting here at home in quarantine for ten days but it is worth it, considering the amazing experience I have had over the past two weeks. The Optimist team selections were where the development team’s journey started. Hennie Burlton, Will Webster, Angus McEwen, Will Fletcher, Merle Neweland, Dilara Soyer and I made up the team selected to represent GBR at the Centenary Regatta, Garda.
When we arrived, our boats weren’t quite ready, so we all went for a lovely refreshing swim in the cool Garda water. We all dried off in minutes and then it was off to rig, ready for the next day’s first training. Our charter boats were lovely, they were almost brand new. It took two hours for us to rig our sails and swap some of our ropes on to the boat, but we all worked as a team to make sure everyone was happy with their new set up.
We had two days initial training prior to racing. We all had a great time, even with a slow capsize from Angus as we got towed out by our coach, James, to find good wind. On the way he pointed out many of the key land features we’d covered in Calshot. Together we decided what we needed to work on to improve, the exercise had to not need buoys as Lake Garda is so deep an anchor won’t reach the bottom. We did tuning runs and lane holding exercises to ensure when we raced in the big international fleet we would get the best race possible. The wind was light and unfortunately completely disappeared when we tried to race against some of the other teams.
On the first day of racing there were lots of sailors from at least 13 different countries. As a team, we went on a wander around the dinghy park as we rigged our boats, it was nice to see the other competitors. There was lots of waiting (four hours), before we managed one lone race. It was tricky getting a front row place on the line with a fleet of such a high standard.
Day two of racing was eventful; racing in the morning was tricky yet again with the wind shifting and dropping and 34 sailors getting a DNF in race two as the wind dropped so much. For a while, angry clouds were looming over the mountains but after two races a sudden decision was made to head in while big, wild wind gusted 30-40 knots, sweeping across the lake. I, with many others, managed to capsize straight away so didn’t get the fun of sailing back to the club with super speed.
5am was the time we had to wake for the final day of racing! The first start signal was at 8am, but after a long eight hours on the water we had only sailed three races. While waiting around for the Ora, James, our coach, persuaded us to make friends with the other countries and we had a wonderful time chatting to seven Swiss sailors. They spoke great English, so it was easy to talk and get to know each other. Sadly, when we got in everything had to be put back like we found it, though working as a team sped this up. All of us had been told before coming that it’s fun to trade team kit but as teenagers we were all too embarrassed to go up and start a conversation with the other teams; Dilara though, was great at it. The Israelis were great traders - I’ve got a lovely light blue team top.
Pick up August’s copy of Cuckfield Life to read Bea’s amazing story in full.