Helena and Jack Sailing for New Zealand in Youth Worlds in Poland

Hi there, it’s Becky, Helena’s Mum. Our kids have gone into a sort of lock down, and I haven’t spoken with Helena since dropping her off with Yachting New Zealand on July 10th.  But thought I could send through an update, as its unlikely we’ll get one out of these guys now that they are racing!

Lake Garda was a great venue for sailing, and Jack and Helena put in 6 training sessions in 4 days. They were with 7 other boats, most of them headed to Youth Worlds. By all accounts it was great, fun, and very useful sessions.

In the past hour, the 2nd day of Youth Worlds has finished for Nacra 15. They’ve now sailed 6 races, and are in 6th place. Yesterday was light wind and rainy. Today was clear and 15-18 knots for racing.  I don’t really know that personally, as I took the Hungarian airline Wizz in a direct flight from Gdansk to Skavsta, Sweden for 70 NZD round trip. How could I not? I’ve been visiting friends here, successfully keeping my head out of Helena’s air space. I’m headed back to Poland tomorrow.

There’s some really gorgeous photos showing up on Jack and Helena’s Facebook page, if you haven’t checked in there.  https://www.facebook.com/Jack-and-Helenas-NACRA-15-Campaign-2240091302872838/  

For more photos and event information, videos and all the cool stuff, here’s the Youth Worlds Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/YouthWorlds/

Also, these races are being tracked through RFID and you can watch the races as they happen, and then they get archived and you can watch them in 4x, 8x, 16x if you choose. Click on Youth Worlds tab and choose a race. If its Live, it will say so. Don’t put too much stock in the RFID results though, it seems they get confused sometimes, and don’t always match results. Here’s link to following along- http://nacra15.sailracer.org/eventsites/live-screen-tracking.asp?eventid=214168&labels=S

And of course, results page- here you go, http://worldsailingywc.org/results/2019_gdynia_pol.php  Then choose the class you want to see. Helena and Jack are Nacra 15.

These guys have worked blooming hard to be part of this, and you helped them get here. With great thanks, Becky

ps. Helena and I fly out only hours after the awards ceremony, so if you want the up to date information, head to those links, as I think we’ll do a post event wrap up next time we do an update in Pledgeme.

Hi everyone,

The last few weeks have pretty busy for both me and Jack, between sailing training and working out logistics for Poland we haven been letting you know how we’ve been getting on. Here’s an update of what me and Jack have been doing over the last few weeks.

Last weekend Jack competed in the 29er national champs and placed fourth with an international student from Spain who has been living in New Zealand for the past year. A noteable achievement considering the amount of time they have had sailing together.

As part of a school trip I went down to Auckland to the farewell ceremony for the Maiden and wave goodbye as it sets off on its first leg of the two year voyage around the world. The first stop is Honolulu in Hawaii. The purpose of this all woman voyage is to raise awareness of equality in the education of woman and to help young woman all over the world. It was such a privilege to be a part of something so special and be able to see them sail off into the horizon.

Apart from that we have also been training very hard in our Nacra 15. Last Thursday and Friday we had a coach, Liv Mackay up in the Bay of Islands to help us get some more practice in before youth worlds and give us a clear plan of the job we have ahead of us. As this one of our last training sessions in New Zealand before we leave we were very happy that the weather decided to cooperate with beautiful 20 knot breezes both days it definitely made it fun.

Our job from now till before we leave is packing up our New Zealand boat to make sure it’s all tidy to be left in a shed and all our spares and tools are organized to come over to Europe with us. With only just over a week till we fly out we have started packing the gear we want to take to Poland.

To everyone who contributed I want to say a big thank you, this would not be possible without everyone getting us a lot closer to our goal. So again thank you. 
We will keep everyone updated with pictures and results over the next few weeks on our Facebook page called Jack and Helena’s Nacra 15 campaign.

We will also be doing email updates as apart of the rewards for pledgeme so you can keep up to date with what’s going on.

Kindest regards, Helena

Read article in Neighborly

Our tickets are confirmed, we are leaving New Zealand on June 22nd, flying via Shanghai to Zurich and then a short flight to Geneva. We arrive late in the evening after a long set of flights. We've given ourselves two days to get our feet under us, try to switch our body time zone and get our boat rigged and ready.