Brothers Jesse and Zander Kirkland took time to reflect on the recently concluded US Sailing’s Rolex Miami OCR on the waters of Biscayne Bay, Florida.
Zander Kirkland said, “It was both a blessing and a curse to sail that newer boat a week before the event, for it was great to see what we could do after all this training against our training partners when we were into a similar boat, but at the same time it made it that much tougher to jump back into 646 for the regatta. It's all good though because that speed we had in the other boat has given us an inner strength to get through these tough times.”
“Jesse and I, both economists by degree and avid followers of the market, see our campaign at the moment, in traderspeak, as a 'great buy'. There is tons of upside potential because the numbers (OCR results) don't give our sailing its fair market value. That is fine for us and our supporters who can trade on this insider information and be well positioned to the future. Please hold the faith, we have not had more confidence in our mission for London 2012, even as we come off one of the more disappointing weeks of sailing,” continued Zander Kirkland.
Jesse Kiirkland said, “The most exciting part of this week, was seeing our training partners (who we have sailed for months together in Miami and California), in new boats, excel in the event. Alex Bishop/Val Smith finished in 8th, The Mexican Bro's finished in 10th and Johnny and Charlie finished 11th.”
“If we could do it again, we would have bought the new rig earlier because it took some days to stretch the shrouds (during racing in the first couple of days, the bend was off) and get used to the newest mast. Initially, we wanted to wait until Europe to buy the new rig, but when it became apparent that the old rig was not going to be reliable, we had to opt for the last minute purchase (and we are thankful we did!). It was different (a good thing) than our old one and took a little adjusting to, which may not have been the greatest for this event, but in the long-run was the right move,” continued Jesse Kirkland.
“The last observation from the regatta is that the legs were longer and the laps were less than any other World Cup Event we have ever done. This put more of an emphasis on speed than usual and allowed faster teams with poor lanes off the line to claw themselves back in the race by drag racing around the course. In Europe, we found starts and hitting the first shift off the line were ultra critical as the legs were short, as we did 4 lappers. So you can imagine, on these longer legs, with our sluggish boat, it made hanging with the top guys very difficult. Often in this regatta, we were looking real good in the first half of the 1st beat, only to be reeled in by our competition and left with lackluster lanes, battling with in the middle of the pack. Our results show this with our abundance of finishes in the teens,” concluded Zander Kirkland.
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