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New Zealand's top Optimist sailors will compete overseas for the first time since 2019, which brought renewed excitement to last weekend's NZIODA development camp at Gulf Harbour.
The weekend brought together 26 sailors and their parents, together with their coaches, for three great days of sailing.
Five sailors are heading over to the Optimist World Championships in Turkey, two boys and two girls are heading to Denmark for the European Championships and a big group of 18 sailors will compete at the New Caledonia nationals in October.
The purpose of the camp was to bring sailors, parents and coaches together to get to know each other, share knowledge and start to build a plan on how they are going to prepare for upcoming events.
The level of sailing was impressive with the sailors across all the teams pushing each other throughout the three days. The wind was good, too, with light breezes on Friday for starting practice building into a solid 22 knots for racing on the Sunday.
The entire open fleet from this year's national championships in Napier were invited along to the race day and congratulations to Oli Stone who finished on top on the day.
George Lee Rush and Seb Menzies, who both competed at the Optimist world championships and this year will compete together at the youth sailing world championships, held an insightful Q&A session about their past international events and success and how they prepare to perform at their best.
Nutritionist Jenny Bates also informed the sailors and parents about how to eat well during events.
NZIODA were fortunate to be able to draw upon the knowledge of coaches Andrew Brown, Xanthe Copeland, Kim Buchanan and Wade Tresadern, who are each leading a team to a regatta this year. Sam Mackay and Kerensa Jennings also filled in for Gareth Moore who unfortunately missed the camp due to Covid.
Learn more about NZIODA and Optimist events here.
