After the Waszp Nationals finished in Rutland I drove home and immediately started packing for a great opportunity to go to San Francisco. Waking up early the next morning, I hopped onto a flight across the pond and arrived that evening (or afternoon in California). After a 2 hour wait at customs I was through and on my way to St Francis Yacht Club to start the two week camp.
I was staying near Mill Valley, which was a beautiful area with plenty going on.
I even managed to borrow a road bike and went on a fantastic ride in the nearby nature reserve. 50K down!
My real purpose in San Francisco was sailing with the American team. Starting our training the day after I arrived, we encountered some great weather as we were hit with an unexpected heatwave. This meant whilst the wind was less that what we had hoped for, we still got a solid 6-17 knots everyday.
The scenery was absolutely stunning and most of our training took place under the Golden Gate Bridge, an incredible experience.
There was also pretty strong movement around the bridge, sometimes meaning it took minutes to move a couple of metres forward. Check out this video!
My sailing fitness was tested hard as there were full hiking conditions pretty much every single day.
It was good to focus on getting more comfortable with a tighter hiking strap. Being a quite long legged human I have slowly realised that I don’t need a loose strap for pure leverage and instead am more comfortable being locked into the boat.
After almost two weeks of solid sailing it was unfortunately time for me to head back home. On the final day we did a quick morning sail before I spent the afternoon being a tourist visiting the sights around SF.
We all went for one final dinner at Sam’s (a pretty nice restaurant actually!) before I got back on the plane the very next morning. Heathrow here I come!
So that was the end of my time in San Francisco. An incredible experience - and one I hope to repeat in the future. Thanks to Chris and John for making it all possible and allowing us to get some solid training in.
Sam