Fresh power is critical when shooting for the top of the Sailing World Cup Series!
On a sailboat, our power comes directly from the wind. Well actually it is indirectly from the wind, it is how you create high and low-pressure systems around your sails and then transfer that energy through the rigging and into the boat to propel you through the water as speeds that are in excess of the winds that are blowing around you. It is all relative, we generate our speed through the sails!
Sailing a high performance boat, we use stiff reinforced mylar sails which give us the shape we need to create speed and performance to drive us to the front of the fleet. As you can imagine, a sailboat, just like a car needs to be operating efficiently to give you the power you need to get up and go! For a team training and competing in an Olympic campaign, we are on the water 25 days per month, 12 months per year. Think about that for a minute…300 days a year on the water sailing hard! When my dad was racing his boat on Lake Erie, he sailed Thursday night races and Sunday mornings with an occasional regatta over the weekend in the summer. Maybe about 25-30 days per YEAR! That compared to my sailing, I sail as much in a month as he did a typical year. The wear and tear on my equipment (not to mention my body) is tremendous. We are constantly pushing the limits of performance and looking for every ounce of added pressure to propel us to the top!
We spend hours every week maintaining our boat, keeping her in top condition for racing. At the same time we need to continually replace parts that start to get worn out. The most important piece of equipment on the boat is our sails. The NACRA 17 sails with a mainsail, a jib and a spinnaker. These sails are tough and built specifically for people that are sailing Olympic programs around the globe. But they do break down and need to be replaced over time. Currently we find that we can get adequate power and performance out of our Mainsail and Jib for about three months (thats three years of sailing on Lake Erie) and a spinnaker lasts us about a month. We could make them last longer, or sail on them after they stretch out and lose their shape, but we are training to be the best in the world! Every day we sail on equipment that is not at it’s prime performance we lose potential and slow our progress towards the top.
A set of sails shipped to us from the manufacturer costs us $6,000. That is a lot of money! It is a considerable part of our campaign budget each month as we Sail in the Sailing World Cup regattas and work towards our goal of representing the USA in the 2016 Games in Rio! As the result, we are constantly on the lookout for an angel who can sponsor our sail inventory…for a single purchase, or for our sails throughout the campaign! Do you have any connections to a company or an individual who can help to make our efforts to go to the 2016 Olympic Games a success by providing our sails either today or for our entire campaign? I know that it is a lot to ask, but having the right equipment to keep us at our peak performance at all times is critical to our success and I know there is a company out there that would love to see their name on our sail and that would take pride in our training and development throughout our campaign for the Rio 2016 Games.
Think about this for a moment, We compete in all of the Sailing World Cup regattas and many others around the globe each year. We train and race a minimum of 25 days per month and are visible in boatparks and near shore as we practice and race around the USA and the globe. That would build brand recognition and give you some amazing artwork (photography) to display in your home, office or yacht club showing everyone that you support young, energetic and hard working athletes in their pursuit of Olympic Gold! If you know of any company that would possibly be interested, please give me a call directly at 216-210-3598. Or you can simply call to wish me luck as I prepare for the Sailing World Cup Miami this next week! I really appreciate your support and assistance in finding someone to sponsor our sail inventory!