Last weekend I travelled to Newport Beach, California to sail with my buddy Paul Cayard in the 2009 Star Class District 5 Championships. I flew in Friday afternoon, while Paul completed the Coastal Cup race from San Francisco to Long Beach.

I set the boat up and managed to get everything ready for his early Saturday arrival. The day started out with no sunshine and rain! Not very Southern Californian, we almost had to make an executive decision and stay in the bar all day due to the lack of sunshine.

Joking aside, we headed out of the Newport Harbor Yacht Club on a tow that lasted for roughly 10 miles at 1015. We arrived on the race course around 1130 got the sails up, had a look at the rig, checked the numbers and had a look at the race course.
Situation normal in Newport Beach – light, lumpy looked like it was going to be a massive day of hiking to leeward…

We completed 4 races and managed to stay near the top of the fleet all day long, by the end of racing on Saturday 3 points separated the top 3 boats. Close action!

Saturday night NHYC held a great party where Rick Peters organized for a band that he had been raving about for days leading up to the event! They lived up to Rick’s billing, “Human Lab” rocked.

It was great seeing old friends, man I must be getting old because their kids are growing up fast!

Sunday was more Southern Californian, sunny and the hint of a day with breeze. The conditions were fantastic, 12 knots a few nice waves to surf downwind and sunshine! Paul and I had a great day winning all three races and only being crossed once the entire day! But… we later learned that the R/C deployed a leeward gate in the 6th race? Go figure in the previous five races there was no leeward gate and in the 6th race of the series they implemented a gate? To make matters worse they set it to the left of the original mark, it would of made some sense to put the new mark to the right (looking downwind) it would have been a bit more clear. And to top things off the mark was attached to a line that was way too long and the mark had drifted downwind about 100 yards… well 90% of the fleet followed us and a few folks went around the “gate”.

Four days later and I still swear I never saw a leeward gate. I guess I need to wake up a bit because as the crew it’s one of my jobs to locate the marks. I was a bit off the pace with this aspect of my job. Thankfully, Paul had seven of the best starts possible to give us a chance! The good news is even with a DSQ in race 6 we still won the regatta!

So what’s next? My firm Delta Investment Management is hosting a lunch at the Gulfport Yacht Club Friday, July 10th, so my focus is now on making this the best lunch in the history of Delta!

Good times

Austin

There have been some big changes on the professional front for me since I last wrote. I have joined Delta Investment Management (www.deltaim.com), an investment advisory firm out of San Francisco.

Before my Olympic days, I worked on the trading desk with Delta Investment Management’s founders, Nick Atkeson and Andrew Houghton. Delta runs individually managed accounts for people who would like to invest in stocks. Their track record is incredible. Last year, the strategy was down only 1.79% including fees and has beaten the S&P 500 by more than 600% since 1996.

As part of my new role with Delta, I have been travelling back and forth to San Francisco quite regularly. So last week, I was with friends celebrating Paul Cayard’s 50th birthday and before that, his daughter Allie’s 19th birthday.

In between all this celebrating, I have made it out on the water on a few occasions. Recently, I was invited to sail the 51’ Swan Beawolf owned by Swede Hakan Bille in the Corinthian Yacht Club’s Friday night beer can race which was followed by a wonderful dinner at the Club. That was lots of fun. Beautiful boat, with electric winches. We were joking that our fingers were getting cramped pushing the button after the four tacks we made going upwind.

The crew onboard Beawolf included Paul Cayard, Paul & Val Erickson, Nick Atkeson and Andrew Houghton). Together we managed to even win a trophy! That was the best part of the evening for me (I love winning!). I even got to steer half the race when Cayard turned her over to me after rounding the weather mark. Good times!

After a long night lurking around in undisclosed locations in Larkspur, I was also invited to crew aboard the TP52 “Flash” which Cayard is running the campaign for two regattas this summer, the Transpac and St.FYC Big Boat Series. What a neat experience, with lots of grinding. I haven’t spent tons of time sailing on big grand prix boats but it has really caught my attention. There is something to be said for ripping around San Francisco Bay in 17kts of breeze, doing 15kts with this massive kite up! We were looking at new sails designed by Quantum that day, by the end of the day my shoulders and arms felt numb!

The Baxter Bowl in Southern California is the next Star regatta on my agenda. It will be good to get back in the boat with Paul, to see a few old friends as well as to make a few new ones.

Austin

All is well here in Qingdao.

More of the same for the last few days. Boat work in the am, followed by dock off around 1245, returning to the harbor around 1800.

We have been very productive over the last ten days and will be closing out camp on Wednesday.

The new boats have arrived from Europe. One of them has been sailing the last few days. Up to this point all is well.

We sailed today for about four hours. No racing, just more testing and tuning. Not the most exciting, but very productive nonetheless.

The visibility today started out fairly decent, but after lunch the fog rolled in. Thank goodness for our two GPSs. We also have back up batteries for the extra GPS unit.
Safety is no accident….

The Irish and British teams are here as well. We’re not sailing together on the water, but it’s nice to see the guys in an unfamiliar place. Everything else seems to be under control, the locals are very nice and the hospitality is some of the best I have ever experienced! We are very well taken care of here in China.

Most of the US Sailing team has left. But the Yingling’s, M470, boards and Laser teams are still here. Mark Kenna our physio left today, so we are left to fend for ourselves with our sore bodies until we get home.

Not much more to report I’m afraid. But I don’t think you want to hear about me measuring the masts, then taking them out and re-stepping the rigs…

Situation normal here. Business as usual.

Later

Austin

The entire gang is here! We are operating on all cylinders. JD and Hans arrived on Monday afternoon/evening. It’s good to have the band together again!

The first day of sailing was spent taking pictures of new sails from on and off the boat! The breeze was about 4-5 kts with the occasional monster puff of 7kts rolling through from time to time. The day was very productive. We were actually very happy with what we saw and how our gear looked.

Logistics are a bit off the pace here. When we want to launch our Star boat into the water (which remember costs Y300 one way) it’s a bit more detailed. One of the coaches has to run up and find the translator, then she runs and finds the hoist operator. Then about ten people stand around and what seems to me, they yell at one another. This goes on and on until our boats get either in or out of the water. So far, so good – no damage to any of the gear, but it’s day to day.

Re-fueling our tenders is a process too. First, we have to pre-pay for the gas, we have to guesstimate how many liters we might need then pay for it. We wait about 30 minutes for a pallet jack to arrive near the boat where there are about ten five gallon fuel tanks. This is how we manually fuel our coach boats. Entertaining nonetheless. You know it’s gonna be a great day when you actually get more fuel in the gas tank than you do all inside the tender and in turn all over the sails that are coming out for the day.

The team has been venturing out of the hotel for dinner. We have discovered an Italian place called DaVinci and the chef Salvatore takes great care of us!

It’s funny, the night before I left San Francisco for China, my wife Sally wanted Chinese food. Being the great husband that I am, I agreed. It sounded like a great plan, might as well get a head start on the local food. Since we have been here we have been eating Western food every night, I think tonight I might eat some lo-mein. You guys would actually be impressed, I learned a few Chinese words. I dont know what I am saying, but the locals seem to be impressed!

Today, we might of actually had the best day in Qingdao as far as sailing goes. We docked off at 1300 and sailed down to our race course where we tested and tuned for a few hours. Wouldn’t you know it the sea breeze came in and we headed out to Korea on a long starboard tack. We kept going and kept going and kept going.

We made it into the shipping channel and even managed to get 3 horns from a passing container ship. This was all fun, but the fog came in and the visibility wasn’t very good. Hans kept looking at the GPS a few times, I could see he was getting nervous about being halfway to the United States, so we decided to turn around. It was blowing about 12-14kts and took us about 1.5 hours on a downwind run to actually see land again. We tested on port tack up to the harbor entrance, finished hauling the boats and did our debrief by 1830.

Life is good here. We all miss home and I especially miss my wife, but we only have one week left.

Our new boat has arrived in Qingdao from Germany (by plane) but it’s stuck in customs. With a little luck we might get it in a few days.

The end is in sight for this journey. We all have mixed emotions about it. I say I won’t miss it, but truth of the matter is I have done this for so long I don’t know how I will feel. I will miss the team, the great adventures and life experiences they don’t teach you in college.

It’s going be a great summer here in China…. It’s amazing how a positive attitude puts your mind in a different place…

Just got home from the gym after a long day so I’m off to take a shower and head to dinner…. I am thinking Chinese tonight.

Later

Austin

Hello from China!

My team, Rodney Hagebols (aka Hagwami) Steve Erickson (aka Wonder) Mark Reynolds (aka Godfather) and me arrived in China on Saturday night after 24 hours of travelling. We are here to train for the next couple of weeks.

Before I arrived, I spent the week in San Francisco (CA) with my wife Sally celebrating our 3rd wedding anniversary! We had a wonderful time with our friends and the Erickson family. We boarded our flight on Friday morning to Beijing and from there to Qingdao. Despite the long travel, we all arrived in good spirits and were ready to get to work. Our training partners, Marc Pickel and Ingo Borkowski, arrived from Germany shortly before us and were anxious to get started.

We are staying in the same hotel as last summer – The Seaview Garden. The have given the hotel a facelift and the rooms are all totally re-done. It’s really very nice. It almost gives me the feeling of staying aboard a Trinity Yacht with all the dark woodwork in the rooms…(well, maybe not a Trinity, but it is nice). I would definitely recommend it. When we arrived, we enjoyed a bit of Chinese cuisine and then returned to the hotel for some much needed sleep.

We woke up Sunday and headed to the training center yacht club called YinHi (the Olympic Village is not yet open to the sailors). It is very convenient because it is across the street from our hotel. We worked all day unloading our two containers and rigging both boats. WOW, we sure do have a lot of stuff! A few times I asked myself if an America’s Cup team has this much gear. The good thing is we are 150% totally self sufficient and 150% totally organized. I even rented the 40’ Container that our boats came over in, as a base station and a storage locker for all of our sails, masts, booms & parts. The only negative thing is that the locals charge us 300 Yuan to launch our Star boat and 300 Yuan to haul the boat out at the end of the day – and we have 3 Star boats here and 2 tenders.

I find that I am much more comfortable here in China compared to last year when it was my first trip, and I am much more focused. The city really is great and very accommodating.

That said, my cell phone doesn’t seem to work over here this time around, so I am in cell phone detox and I am enjoying it! But not to worry, I still talk to my wife via Skype.

Last night the boys and I ventured out of the hotel to a nice Italian restaurant in the Shangra La Hotel, a short cab ride away. Every cab ride here costs about 10 Ding Dongs (this is what we call the currency, the real name is Yuan) anyway 10 ding dongs is about a dollar. We ate at the DaVinci restaurant and made friends with the Chef Salvatore who is from the South of Italy. He took really great care of us, I am sure we will go back.

Before I left for China, NBC sent me a cool Flip Camera. It’s this really small movie camera that I take around with me and shoot behind the scene footage of what our team does. This is so fun, but unfortunately the footage I have been shooting so far has been a bit off color, so I am not sure it will make it to the big screen.

That’s all for now. I have been up since 5am (couldn’t sleep) and getting ready to head to breakfast and looking forward to another good day of training.

Later

Austin

Check out the radio interview with Kevin Radich at KGO boomp3.com