January & February

Well today is the last day of February and my birthday! 

It certainly has been an interesting couple of months with 95% of the time being unsailable with over 40 knots battering the English coastline! Luckily as part of the British Sailing Team we went to Vilamoura in Portugal for 10 days and enjoyed lush weather and incredibly productive hours on the land and sea. Have a look through the photos below detailing my life over the past two months:

Loving the stunning scenery.

Returning home it was straight back to the hard work. Unfortunately sailing was difficult as the English weather had other ideas. Out of the 24 January days I was in Weymouth I was only able to sail 6 occasions! Incredibly frustrating being forced to be sat onshore but at least it meant I was able to hit the gym hard.

Straight after Christmas I went on a family holiday to France. It was an amazing week with the family and was great to relax and unwind for one week of the year!

The bad sailing weather was also a great excuse to put some miles in on the bike and I have enjoyed doing some rides to and from home.

With my boat being packed up and shipped off to Vilamoura in Portugal I brought the Waszp down to Weymouth to ensure I could still get some decent hours in on the water. Despite rarely sailing the Waszp in 2017 I found it to be a very useful addition for my Laser sailing, improving reaction times, hiking and upper body fitness and generally learning more about how a boat should feel to go as fast as possible. It's amazing how easy it is to gybe a Laser in 20+ knots once you've tried foiling gybes at 20 knots in the Waszp!

I was then lucky enough to get a tour round the Selden factory in Gosport by Steve Norbury. Being the new UK supplier of Laser carbon top masts I was incredibly impressed with their quality, efficiency and operations as a whole.

At last the time came to fly out to Portugal for our first overseas training camp of the year. Overall we had stunning conditions (compared to the UK anyway!) and managed to put some serious hours in on the water. It was also great to do a lot of riding, covering almost 200 kilometres over 5 days.

Glamour conditions on the tow.

Returning to the rather chilly UK I hosted my Sam Whaley Sailing Dinner on Saturday 24th February. With over 40 guests it was a great evening with delicious food followed by a presentation on my sailing. It was a huge success all round and I thoroughly enjoyed raising awareness about my sailing and where I want to go. Thank you to everyone who attended and made it an evening I wont forget!

Dinner served at the Sam Whaley Sailing Dinner!

I am also pleased to announce that I am now working with Waterspeed App on development of its mobile applications for watersports. 

Waterspeed helps to improve you water sports, using Apple Watch GPS or iPhone to get Instant Speed, Direction angle, best speed average over 10 seconds, Max Speed and more.

I find it very useful for my training and enables me to replay sessions and debrief sessions with greater accuracy and understanding. 

Check out their website here.

Despite sailing in the UK being rather limited I am pleased to have made good progress and am really excited for it to finally warm up (and maybe get slightly less windier!). 

Next up for me is travelling to Palma next week to for another training camp before returning a few weeks later for the Princess Sofia competition, which really kicks off the sailing season for me!

In the meantime check out these epic photos which I have just got from the Youth Nationals last year. Really shows that hiking can be fun!

Thanks for reading,

Sam

Record Growth in 2017

Sam Whaley Sailing is growing fast. 

Think you can help Sam in his dream to the Olympics? Contact him here to request a brochure, meeting or just a chat.

2017 has been an incredibly successful year both on and off of the water. Highlights include finishing top 5 at both the Laser Under-21 World and European Championships and moving up to 73rd in the senior world rankings. Off of the water Sam Whaley Sailing has seen considerable growth across the website, social media channels and more. See all of the statistics below:

2017 + Palamos Christmas Race

What a year it has been. I have had so amazing experiences, learnt so much and had many great times on the water. 2017 sure hasn't been easy but I am proud of my achievements and have loved every second of it.

Looking back to last week I was out in Spain for the Palamos Christmas Race, a fun and competitive international competition held near Barcelona every December. A great event to do it is very easy to get to and has a lovely atmosphere to it. In the end I managed to finish 5th overall, a nice step forward and encouraging looking into next year. Check out my week below:

Often the hardest part of these sailing events is actually getting your boat to the competition! Despite some rather last minute complications I managed to fit my boat on another trailer with Ali Young and was able to make my pre-booked flights into Barcelona, flying over the snowy Pyrenees on my way.

After arriving at Palamos, unloading, getting ready and having a single day to practice I was thrown into competition in some stunning conditions - sunny, windy and wavy! Great fun.

After a week of very mixed conditions I managed to sail well in the medal race to finish 2nd and therefore move up to 5th overall! Still my performance was far from perfect and it is encouraging that I was so close to the leaders despite some of these mistakes. Onwards and upwards.

Giving it beans on an upwind leg at Palamos Christmas Race.

Beautiful (but incredibly cold!) sunsets greeted us everyday after racing in Palamos.

It was very sad to leave Spain after such a wonderful week with friends doing what I love at the highest level.

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2017

2017 has been the best year of my life, check out some of the highlights from my Instagram feed:

I also have made a short 2017 highlights video, showcasing my sailing from January right through till December as I trained hard and competed at numerous national and international events. Check it out below:

Sam Whaley Sailing - 2017

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2018

Looking onto next year I already have a very busy and productive calendar and look forward to exceeding my goals, fulfilling my dreams and hopefully bringing me one step closer to the Olympics. 

Hope you all had a very merry Christmas and have a happy New Year!

Sam

Winter Training

It is crazy to think that my winter training is already well underway and Christmas is just around the corner, this year has gone ever so quickly and I remember January like it was yesterday! I am sure of one thing though; 2017 has been the best year of my life. I have been lucky enough to have travelled to many different countries, doing the thing I love surrounded by great friends and family. 

I've made big jumps in my performance on the water and am now a more robust, well-rounded sailor than at the start of the year. Having had a long and productive season it has been nice reflecting on the year and taking the many learnings from 2017 I feel confident that I am totally prepared to step into 2018 and give it everything at the highest level.

With my training currently being based out of Weymouth at the Olympic sailing academy it has been great to get a lot of hours in before it gets too cold. Unfortunately the last few weeks have got a lot colder but one can hope for warmer weather in January.

Obviously enjoying the windy sunset downwind sessions in Weymouth!

Training with the lads at a British Sailing Team P3 camp.

Almost hitting the cliffs at Osmington after a monster downwind session - it's rather daunting when you turn back to go upwind and Portland is far in the distance!

After winning the Laser Inlands back at the start of November it was great to see the local paper put me on the back page with an article on my win and future in sailing - thanks guys!

A few weeks later I got the opportunity to feature in the British Sailing Team Christmas video which was great fun. With the theme being foiling I put on a ridiculous giant inflatable bauble suit and tried to jump into the Waszp and race against a foiling windsurfer and Nacra catamaran. Although rather silly it was great fun! Check out the video below:

Great photo of me flying above the waves with the red bauble suit on.

When the suit was inflated it was ridiculous! Despite not being able to see my hands or the boat I managed to race against a foiling windsurfer, with the Waszp emerging victorious.

Take a look at the video below for more shots taken on the day. I am really happy with how my learning in this new style of sailing is going and cant wait to attend some fun events next year.

Quickly returning to my singlehanded Laser sailing I enjoyed a very productive week at Weymouth before travelling to Hayling Island to coach RS Aeros for the weekend. It was great fun and I loved getting back into the boat, it really is a joy to sail. Plus it wasn't too cold on the RIB coaching either.

Coaching RS Aeros at Hayling Island in December.

I have a busy few weeks coming up before Christmas, setting up a new boat tomorrow before flying to Palamos in Spain for the annual Palamos Christmas Regatta on Saturday. Hopefully it'll be a bit warmer than it has been back home recently!

Beautiful sunrise back home the other day.

Merry Christmas!

Sam

Endeavour Trophy 2017

The Endeavour Trophy is a unique event in the UK dinghy sailing world. Held on the tidal waters of the rivers Crouch and Roach at the end of every year, it's an invitation only three day event, with the guest-list hand-picked from National Champions of selected recognised fleets. The RYA recognises The Endeavour as the pinnacle of that year's dinghy sailing achievements which will hail a 'Champion of Champions'.

With both my brother Ben and I being national champions of the Laser Radial and the RS Aero 7 respectively we had a choice of how we wanted to sail and who with. However due to a lack of boat and crew in the end we decided to pair up together, with Ben helming as we would represent the Lasers.

Heading into the event we suddenly realised how inexperienced at this new style of sailing we really were. Having only ever sailed together for 2 hours before and knowing the last time we did that I almost swam ashore after the first race we knew it was going to be tough to work together, remain friends and somehow achieve a good result. Suddenly we were faced with all these new aspects of sailing which had never cropped up in our singlehanded sailing before and I really felt like a fish out of the water! 

We knew that if we were to do well we would have to come up with a plan, work together and try to put our singlehanded minds to rest. We came up with lists beforehand of what we probably would be good at coming from Lasers (such as windy air upwind hiking for example) and what we most likely would not be good at (spinnaker work for example). We then tried to work out if we could fix any of the weaknesses in the few hours sailing before the competition before assigning roles to each other and making sure we knew who was doing what at all times.

We had one day of training beforehand in a rather big 18-25 knots which was interesting to say the least.  After launching our RS200, we reached across to the training area and on the first gybe absolutely sent it into a huge pitch pole and went head over heels - I didn't even realise it was possible to pitchpole a 200! Probably something to do with my 80kg in the front...

I didn't even realise it was possible to pitchpole a 200! 

So after 3 hours training under our belt together we headed into the first day of the Endeavour Trophy with lots of energy and enthusiasm, ready to take on any challenges.

The first day was a day of huge learning for us. We had some good windward mark rounding's; 8th in race 1, 3rd in race 2 and then led around the first windward marks of races 3, 4 and 5 after nailing the starts (perhaps too much after an OCS in race 5?!? Not sure if this is the helm or crews fault either...). We had great speed upwind and had a good understanding about our priorities but our big weakness were the downwinds with the spinnaker. Unfortunately it was perfectly summed up in the first race when I hoisted the spinnaker and said to Ben "So how do I make this thing go fast again?". Facepalm. Whilst we did lose a significant number of places on every downwind, we reset after every race, got over our brotherly squabbles and tried to approach every race like the start of a new day. So after posting results of 13th, 6th, 19th and a 10th we were sat in 13th position overall, not bad for double handed amateurs but we definitely were hungry for more.

Sunday dawned to a slightly windier day which got us rather excited at the prospect of hiking. After sitting down and having many discussions on some of our downwind speed issues the previous night we had many new learnings to test out on the final 3 races of the championship. 

In race 1 we had mega tidal flow against us pushing us downwind and whilst the original strategy was to hit the left shoreline at 2 minutes to go we managed to notice a very weird tidal effect on the right hand shore line. After a quick discussion we changed strategy, smashed the start and tacked out right immediately. 

It soon became apparent we had made a great call, and quickly we were battling with the top 5 boats whilst the rest of the fleet were some way behind. A quick tidal shift call by me near the top of the beat resulted us in overtaking 3 boats in the space of 20 seconds and we rounded the first windward mark in 2nd. We hoisted the spinnaker and using the new knowledge I had soaked up we blasted off downwind, in the process managing to overtake the RS400 sailors in front of us. Yes that's right, we managed to overtake a boat on a downwind!

Whilst Ben and I were silently celebrating the success of overtaking a single boat downwind we dropped the spinni, rounded the leeward mark and set off upwind to the right shoreline with a big smile on our faces.

Crumbs. Looking back at the fleet I saw Ben Saxton and Toby Lewis (2015 & 2016 Endeavour Winners) only about 20 seconds behind us. How did they get there?! I thought they were deep at the windward mark?! Game on. Tacking up the right shoreline we managed to hold them off on the upwind and rounded the final windward mark still leading. One more downwind to go. Despite us trying every trick we could think of, Saxton & Lewis showed great speed and just beat us to the leeward mark, taking the race win from us. 

With a big change of course area for Race 2 we knew the strategy would be completely different and set up for the race start. Expecting not many tidal differences across the course our strategy was to go left expecting a big left hand shift. We executed a good pin end start and sailed over to the left before getting the big leftie. Despite the wind shift it quickly became apparent that there was some tidal differences as the top 4 boats all came from the right hand side and we ended up rounding the windward mark in 5th. We were a lot better on our downwinds this time and combined with some solid upwinds managed to cross the line in 6th before we were horrified to find out we had got our second OCS! Nightmare.

Reflecting on race 2 Ben and I came up with a good theory as to why the right hand side paid on the first upwind. Taking into account the big left shift which was holding (and meant to stay in) as well as other factors we came up with a controversial theory that it would be the opposite side that would pay in the last race. After weighing up our options we decided we had nothing to lose, got another good start at the pin end and when the entire fleet tacked to hit the right hand shore we held out all the way to the left. Yes it was risky with the leverage we had but we both were very confident in the strategy and it paid off, with us coming into the windward mark with a 50 metre lead!

This time though Saxton & Lewis were right on our tail after some great downwind speed and had overtaken us by the leeward mark. With Saxton electing to head out right again on the beat, Ben and I chose the same strategy as previous and hit the shore on the left. With the wind still in a left phase from the beginning our move worked and we managed to overtake Saxton, coming into the final windward mark neck and neck with us rounding in front by centimetres.

Hoisting the spinnakers together, we both gybed simultaneously with Saxton pulling off the classic Emirates Team New Zealand VS Oracle Team USA America's Cup gybe and leaving us suffering in his dirty wake behind. Whilst it was game over for us leading the race, we were in 2nd by quite a distance and brought it home to cross the last race in 2nd.

Well what can I say, what a championship! Huge learning, great fun and awesome racing against the best of the best. We finished 13th overall but with a first windward mark position score line of 8th, 5th, 3rd, 2nd, 1st, 1st, 1st, 1st it was a shame the Endeavour Trophy isn't just a race to the windward mark! But we can't have everything in life, right? I had a great time and would love to do the Endeavour Trophy again and I really would recommend it to anyone who gets the chance, it is a real honour. Who knows, if I am ever back again I will certainly have some practice beforehand with a spinnaker! (and I would probably take the helm, sorry bro).

A big thanks to the UK Laser Association for their great help in supporting Ben and I in representing the Laser class this year and thank you to the Royal Corinthian YC for hosting such a marvellous event. Hopefully see you next year.

• Highlight of the weekend: Leading races and pitchpoling an RS200.
• Biggest squabble topic: About what angle to sail downwind with the spinnaker up, or me accidently letting the spinnaker flap.
• Best perk: Delicious food, lovely accommodation and meeting loads of new people.
• Most used phrase: HIKE!

Onwards and upwards.

Sam