After such a great event, and overall experience, those two words are at the top of the pile. A victory here in Muscat leaves me indebted to talented and fun teammates, unbelievable shore support crew, phenomenal competitors, the great folks at Oman Sail, and, of course, the legs that run all my adventures: amazing family and friends back home in Boston, at Tufts, and around the world.
I was clearly incapable of writing updates during the event. Maybe next time. A different installment will come out every day this week.
The breeze was lightβ-really light. What this means for me and Nasser is riding stomach-down, almost as if stretched out on a sprinting horse, while straddling the front of the hulls. To avoid moving back to the trampoline during jibes, I cross from one bow to the other by walking across an 8-millimeter spectra bridle, with a wire of similar thickness at shoulder height to help keep balance. On one crossing, I tried to change direction halfway across the bridle, and, to put it simply, missed.
After 10 days of heavy air training, I felt like we were going slowly in the moderate breeze. Within an instant of hitting the water, I was quickly reminded just how damn fast these cats are. Considering this happened while we were winning our first race of the event, I realized pretty quickly I had two options:. Find a way to grab the boat before it totally passed over my head, and avoid forcing my team to sail back and pick me up. Start swimming back home to Boston. It grazed my fingertips, but no luck.
I managed to fling myself underwater a few feet to the side, just catching the rudder with one arm and the side of my ribcage. Effectively having knocked the wind out of myself, I just hung on until Will came over and yanked me out of the water. Times we had to turn around and sacrifice our lead: 0.
