World championship

After further training in Warnemünde and a short vacation break, we competed at this year's Junior World Championship, which took place from 25.7. to 29.7.2023 as part of the Travemünde Week. Arriving in Travemünde, the boat first had to be measured. To weigh the boat, many of our spliced constructions had to be dismantled and then reattached. Therefore the measurement took a whole day. The following day we trained one last time and sailed in the Practice Race. A practice race is often held at important events in order to coordinate sailors and race committee. The race committee can check their equipment and the organizational structure and sailors can prepare for the races, get to know the venue and become familiar with the race course.

The next day our season highlight began. Although our starts and upwinds were strong, we lost places again and again on the downwind course. We discussed a lot with our coaches and thought about what the reason could be, but all attempts to sail higher or lower to the wind resulted in no improvement. Within the team we came to the conclusion that our difficulties must be related to the new gennaker that we had been provided with by the Berlin Sailing Association. It already had the new, somewhat flatter cut and we had only sailed it one day in training.

The rest of the days went similarly; light, shifting winds also further complicated the situation for us, as we were now a rather heavy team for the FX. Unfortunately, we did not manage to qualify for the Gold Fleet despite placements in the midfield.

After the regatta we were pretty disappointed and had difficulties to process the events. Actually everything went well, the maneuvers, starts and tactics were all right and after one year of intensive training we felt like we had deserved more. In the end, it we looked ahead and the next step was to switch to the big rig.