Here we are again, six months down the road, back at the little fishing village that is our satellite venue for the Games.
We flew yesterday at 8am (6am at the airport is E-A-R-L-Y) and spent the entire day travelling. It’s drizzly and foggy and light.
Today our mission is to unpack the 6 containers that have been shipped over. We’ve already been delayed with there being a hold up with breakfast (the cafeteria isn’t open yet), but we’re about to get down to the boat park now. See you later!
Big events like the Games is always when we get to know more people outside our immediate team. For the most part, we ‘older’ sailors already know everyone else, from previous trips and gym training in Singapore together. But the Optis tend to be an unknown bunch, because there are always new kids coming in as the older ones age out into other classes.
For example, one of the Optis at this training camp, Edward, I had never met before. (He turned out to be a quiet, but good kid. Er, not that the two qualities are mutually exclusive.)
I just wanted to mention them in this post because they are such a tough bunch of kids. All of them except Kimmy fell sick halfway through the camp but they all grunted through and came out the other end strong and healthy again.
Kimmy and Ryan are the AG sailors, but Yukie and Edward were great to have along, too. Thanks for your help, kids, and thanks for being cute roommates! (For the first few days until I moved downstairs, at least.)
There are 10 days left to the opening of the Asian Games. Where has all the time gone?
The last two weeks in Perth gusted by (with many 20 knot days!) and we’re down to the last three days in Singapore before we leave on Friday. There are plenty of stories from Perth to share, and I’m sorry there wasn’t that much time to tell it as it happened. I’ll try to use these three days in Singapore to recap the fun, though!
Today I popped into Sports Council to make sure the sports medicine side of things was covered. I guess the rest of the team had similar ideas, because it was Sailor Central there – poor Dr Cormac, inundated by sailors this morning!
We packed up our gear today because in less than a week, we’re heading to Perth for the next phase of our training leading up to the Asian Games. Today concludes the third week of intensive training in Singapore. We’ve been really lucky to have the opportunity to work with Mark Plummer this past month; he is an excellent coach! Thanks, Mark!
And have I mentioned yet that Mark is probably one of the funniest guys I’ve ever met. My favourite comment from him has to be when he suggested that humans should lay eggs.
‘I mean, it’s okay for me, but for the girls, having to carry the baby around for nine months? Wouldn’t it be so much easier if you could just pop out an egg and put it in the oven, and there’s the baby!’
I’m going to miss that, hee hee.
Plus, he takes videos. And so for the first time, we can actually show you guys what we really do out there. For those of you who haven’t actually seen sailing in action … enjoy! (This is about as good as it gets in Singapore.)
We’ve spent the weekend packing the containers going to China. There are 6 in total, to ship all our boats, equipment, coach powerboats, food and water to Shanwei.
Oh, and there are little air conditioned offices in two of them. For chilling and for a tools workshop in Shanwei. That is going to be super important!
What with people being overseas, there ended up only 6 sailors and a handful of coaches being available to pack. At least coming home we should have all hands on deck.
There are 50 days to the opening ceremony of the Asian Games. The sailing team has officially been announced, and we will be going, along with 18 other sailors and about 10 or so officials. Back to the little fishing village, Shanwei. I’m looking forward to the waves. Remember this?
Anyway, here’s the full team:
- 470 Men: Roy Tay and Terence Koh
- 470 Women: Dawn Liu and Siobhan Tam
- 420 Men: Justin Liu and Sherman Cheng
- 420 Women: Rachel Lee and Cecilia Low
- Laser Standard: Colin Cheng
- Laser Radial: Scott Sydney
- RSX: Leonard Ong
- Mistral: Joshua Choo
- Hobie 16: Teo Wee Chin and Justin Wong
- Optimist Boys: Ryan Lo
- Optimist Girls: Kimberly Lim
- Keelboat: Tan Wearn Haw, Yurii Siegel, Colin Ng and Benjamin Tan
We’ve just completed stage 1 of our final AG preparations. We’re still in Singapore at this stage and we’ve been working with 2 new coaches, Dan Smith and Mark Plummer.
Will try to update more regularly as we proceed, because this is it, people – the final, most exciting stretch of our campaign this year!
