ILCA UK Chair blog # 111

Nov 4

Hannah’s words of wisdom (debatable)

Hold on tight everybody. Mark has taken his life into his own hands and passed over the baton of the next blog to me. What could possibly go wrong?

The first place I would like to start is to say thank you, actually. I owe an awful lot to the ILCA class, and the wonderful people who are involved in it. It has been a friendly and supportive environment to learn, train and race in ever since I first stepped into an ILCA 4 a Very Long Time Ago, through to when Ken Falcon – then UKLA President – had to sail my ILCA 6 back to shore at a qualifier in Plymouth because it was too windy and wavy to do it myself, through to being the first female to win the ILCA 6 Nationals, through to being selected – at least a decade later than originally planned and hoped for – to go to my first Olympics. It's been a long road, and I’m very grateful that that road has been in the ILCA class.

“What could possibly go wrong?” – a mantra that I’ve had to use quite a lot in my fairly lengthy sailing career to date. There are many routes to the same destination, and it is absolutely a-okay to take one of the more scenic ones. The view can sometimes be better that way.

My entire career actually started as a skive out of P.E. at school that has got really out of hand. I was completely terrible at pretty much all school sports, and my reports used to read something along the lines of: “Attainment C, Effort 1. Tries hard but has made only limited progress. Future lies elsewhere.” (I love a bit of irony.) When it came up as an option that I could get out of all the activities I was so bad at, and use my £2 weekly pocket money to go sailing on Wednesday afternoons instead, it seemed like a bit of a no-brainer.

I wasn’t initially a particularly naturally talented sailor, and I didn’t take the conventional route through youth sailing. I was often left out of squads at first time of trying, and it was only really when I took a gap year after school and went self-funded around the European circuit that spring and summer that I started to have some results that showed any real promise.

Following that year, I was asked to train alongside the British Sailing Team, which I just about managed to balance with studying at Cambridge. It wasn’t all ‘plain sailing’ (is there any such thing?!) from there onwards though. I made the decision to sail full time after university, but was dropped from the team 15 months later, and retired (badly, because here we are) after blowing all my savings trying to keep going.

I made it back into the team four years later, after crowdfunding and working my way through the 2018 season, which culminated in finishing 4th at the World Cup in Japan. Despite its many challenges, I’m incredibly grateful for that period of time in my life and the perspective, adventures, and experiences it gave me. Everything from trapping a stranger into a revolving door compartment with me when I tried to take a rolled sail through it and got stuck, to getting Ben Elvin’s van impounded in Barcelona… those are the things that make you smile and tell stories about when you get old... well, as old as me.

One of the first questions that people ask when I say I am a sailor is: “Oh, do your parents sail?” and when I tell them that they don’t, they always look incredibly puzzled and ask how on earth I got into it. It still bothers me that there is a perception that you can’t make it in sailing without a family history in the sport. My parents are tree surgeons, but are wonderfully supportive of my sailing and have learned their port from starboard now, although I do still have to ask for a picture rather than a description when I’m away sailing and Duncan sends a Sailingfast parcel to their house instead of mine. Otherwise I get: “well there’s some yellow string, and some red string, and a few metal bits.”

As Micky said in his blog, one of the most frequent questions that you get asked when the Games is over is: “so, what’s next?” – and just like Micky, I also still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.

I do know that there’s a lot of aspects to sailing that I personally feel could be improved through some small positive changes – be that female participation, grassroots inclusion, or financial barriers to progression up the high-performance pathway – and I would love to be a part of helping to bring some of those changes about.

It’s been amazing to watch the women’s America’s Cup and the increasing opportunities for females in sailing, but there is a long way still to go. We have a real gender imbalance in top level coaches, it was a shame to see so few women in the youth America’s Cup boats, and it seemed like a missed opportunity to have just one race for the women’s AC final, when there was such an eager audience.

I’m really aware that I was incredibly privileged to grow up by the coast in Lymington so I was exposed to the sport at a young age, and I was an only child, so my parents were able to traipse around the country at weekends taking me to sailing events. That being said, I have definitely done the majority of my career on a shoestring, and that had moments of being very difficult. I also understand how hard it is to be on the wrong side of selection decisions, which is why I’m now sitting on the Youth Selection Committee. I really believe that difficult decisions can be made well, and delivered well, to keep as many talented and enthusiastic people in the sport as possible.

If anyone reading this has any great ideas about how to change the world, please do get in touch! I’d love to hear from you. Sailors do love to talk about sailing, after all.

I will leave you by disclosing the best piece of top-secret coaching advice I have received to date (there is always still time) – and that was from my Mum at the Optimist Nationals, when I was 10-years-old. Lots of other parents were talking about the tide, and which side of the beat to go up, but she nailed the ‘applies-to-every-situation’ tip with: “make sure you eat your sandwiches and mind your head.”

Happy sailing everyone – and see you on the water.

Hannah

Snippets

ILCA UK Winter Training

Spaces are available for Regional training on 16/17Th Nov See our calendar for more

National Training eligibility has been updated to top 50% in 2/4 of the events, with sailors who have transitioned to the ILCA 6 after the ILCA Nationals able to include their ILCA Nationals event in the ILCA 4 if they were top 50% male/female as appropriate.

We are also increasing the number of ILCA 6 tickets from 12 to 24 for the 7/8 Dec WPNSA All-Regions Open Training

For ILCA4s who missed the winter training program, we are creating 6 x ILCA 4 tickets for the 7/8 Dec WPNSA All-Regions Open Training, with a waiting list of 6 - on the basis that when that waiting list is full we can then convert it to a further group of 6.

Other news

ILCA UK Women’s Regatta video (new)

ILCA UK ILCA 6 Masters Inland Championship at Rutland Sailing Club

ILCA UK ILCA 7 Masters Inland Championship at Rutland Sailing Club

Women In Sailing Talk with British Sailing Team’s Daisy Collingridge

ILCA Women's Coaching Day at Queen Mary Sailing Club

Tri360 Challenge Fundraising – with Andrew Simpson

Noble Marine & Rooster Qualifier WPNSA write ups: ILCA 7, ILCA 6, ILCA 4

Noble Marine ILCA 6 Masters UK National Championships 2024 at Hayling Island Sailing Club

Noble Marine ILCA 7 Masters UK National Championships 2024 at Hayling Island Sailing Club

Olympian raises £18k by raffling Paris 2024 boat

ILCA Midlands Grand Prix at Staunton Harold Sailing Club