Lake Garda ILCA Youth Easter Meeting 2024

By Jackson Black

Last week, my sister Maddison, Ruby Carter, and myself, were lucky enough to head to Lake Garda for the annual ILCA Youth Easter Regatta.  The fleet was made up of 166 ILCA 4’s and 180 ILCA 6’s which made launching and retrieving very hectic and scary!  The regatta started on the 27^th March, however we flew over early to join the Sail in Garda sailing team which had five coaches across 60 sailors.  We trained for four days before the regatta, with a morning session for a couple of hours within our teams, in for lunch (pasta of course!!)/briefing and then out for race training in the afternoon with 4-5 short races. It was great training with so many people from different countries and the standard of the coaches was very high with numerous Olympic medals across the coaches.

The regatta was meant to have up to 10 races, including a gold and silver final series, however the wind didn’t show up as expected and we only managed 6 races across the 4 days.  Although we were a little disappointed, it didn’t change the fact we were lucky to be in Italy, meeting lots of other sailors from around the world and learning things every day.  It was great to represent the RQYS Youth Squad in a foreign country and as we were the only Aussies in the regatta if our bibs didn’t stand out, our Australian accent certainly did.  People commented how friendly we were on and off the water, so maybe I need to be a bit more aggressive with my starts!!

This regatta was about having fun, meeting new people, and spending time on the water with sailors from different parts of the world.  We were very lucky to be able to do this and hopefully the next overseas regatta will have more from RQYS and we might even be able to have our coach, Adrian Finglas, over with us.  Hopefully, we have also convinced a few sailors from the US, Norway and Bermuda to come down for the Nationals at RQ in January.

Results

28^th Jackson Black

125^th Ruby Carter

154^th Maddison Black

Photos: Sail in Garda team + Dad