Nikola Girke and Luke Ramsay train in Long Beach

by Nikola Girke and Luke Ramsay on 3 Jun 2014 Canadian sailors Nikola Girke and Luke Ramsay talk about their recent training in Long Beach, California.

A huge thank you to Alamitos Bay Yacht Club for hosting our training camp and US Sailing for organizing and delivering an incredibly valuable training camp with a variety of guest coaches. And to avid catamaran sailor and amazing host John Williams and his daughter Sara, thank you for putting us up and making us feel right at home.

Waking up in the mornings there is usually a marine layer hanging over land and by 11 am it has burned off and the seabreeze starts to blow. Typically the later we sail the better the conditions, so we had the mornings to hit the gym, catch up on boat work and work on the logistics for the rest of our season. We saw anything from 8-18 knots and could choose a variety of different wave states by sailing either inside the breakwall in flat water, or outside where there was both chop and swell.

Not only did we learn heaps, we were able to cement some of our lessons and techniques that we've been working on as a group over the last year. This reinforced our confidence that we have been and are moving in the right direction.

The boat is now in a container and headed to Rio for some training we will do there later in the year. Our next big adventure is over in Europe where we rejoin in July for the European Championships, in La Grande Motte, France for a chance to put our skills to test under pressure - the European website