A Team members report from the Europeans

From the webmaster:  Here follows an excellent report from an actual Optimist sailor (Patrick Crosbie).  This is what our website should be about.  Please let's have more such reports:

We met at Cork Airport early on a Thursday morning and got a Ryanair flight to London with our coach Thomas. Team Colm started training early in Stansted using a luggage trolley for practicing racing.

In London we met the Dublin crew (Pam our new mum, James from the ISA and Tara) and got on another plane to Trieste which is in Italy but is still the nearest airport to Slovenia. It was really warm when we got off the plane. When we were finished with the airport (honest we didn’t blow it up) we went by road to Piran and we went swimming in the sea as soon as we arrived.

The event was on in a big orange hotel a bit from the town but we had to stay in the town the first couple of nights because our apartments were not available until the Saturday. We had to wait for our boats as well so this meant that we had fitness workouts (more swimming) in front of the hotel while Thomas chased around trying to get everything sorted.

By Saturday night we were all sorted with boats and hotel and were mad keen to get on the water. Sunday was practice race day and we had a lovely sea breeze of 6/7 kts. We speed tested the French team and looked good but the race was a joke with lots of sailors messing up and over the start line.

The opening ceremony was good fun and when we arrived in the town square the biggest flag was a green white and gold crosshaven RFC flag right across the stage. 

Now to the racing – actually if you want to know about that you'll have to read the brief report and Irish results at the bottom of my report ......or you could check out the online tracking here  and see what a brilliant tactical job we all did during the week. 

We all had great fun during the event and learnt lots too. The weather was great all the way through with many types of wind strength for an event that was expected to be light. I would like to thank Pam O’Brien , James O’Callaghan and Tomas O’Shea and  everyone else who made it possible for the team to go to  Slovenia and sail there.

Brief report and Irish results: