Sam Goodchild Sailing

RYA Press Release:

Two young RYA Keelboat Squad sailors will be bidding to show the big boat sailing world they are ones to watch for the future at the National Bank Youth International Match Racing Championships this week.

The invitation-only event in Auckland, New Zealand is considered one of the most prestigious events on the World youth match racing calendar.

And Southern Squad duo Sam Goodchild and Nick Wilkinson are putting their skills to the test against seven other top young international crews at the regatta, which got underway in the early hours of Thursday morning UK time (12 February).

Skipper Goodchild, 19, and 17-year-old Wilkinson, both member of Oxford Sailing Club, were part of the team that romped to RYA National Youth Match Racing glory last summer, emphatically claiming the title without dropping a single race over the three day event. 

In taking National victory, Team Goodchild are now also in pole position to represent Britain at the 2009 Governor’s CupInternational Junior Match Racing Championship in California this summer.

The National Bank Youth International Match Racing Championships runs until Sunday 15 February.

We had a very windy first day to The Natinoal Bank International Youth Match Racing Championships, and unfortunately a dissappointing one aswell. Not helped by being over the start line, therefore having to return for two races along with and a few other penalties picked up in the pre-start. Even though we only came out with one win, we are not too downbeat as we know why and how we lost most of our races and also know that we are still capable of winning if we can elmeinate a few of the errors we made.

Even though the boats have keels, they act very much like a dinghy and are very weight sensitive, and as we are 35kilos under the weight limit we are having to work very hard to get the best out of the boats. Despite that, we are managing to keep up with most of the other teams and as a result are have some good races, just never quite doing as well as we could do. 

Well, hopefully we will get less wind over the next few days and be able to come back with some better results. 

Sam

We all finally arrived in Auckland on Saturday morning, and spent the weekend adjusting our body clocks and watching a bit of the Louis Vuitton Pacific Series. We had a chance over the last two days to go sailing on the Elliott 6’s as to get a bit of practise on the boats before we start racing. Tomorrow is registration, followed by a final practise session before we start racing on Thursday.

Luckily, we were able to get the last years winner of the event to come out with us today and show us of few of the tricks with the boat. Unfortunately, we are the only team competing that have not sailed the Elliott 6’s before. But, the three of us are now fairly confident about our crew work and think that after another days training we will be up to a level where we can give it our best shot. 

Sam