Boat is packed and ready, Israel here we come!

It has been a while since our last update!

after a quiet couple of weeks in which we didn't sail at all due to really bad weather and illness (not too serious and we are all fine now), we got back on the water last weekend. It was really good to be sailing again, even in the cold shifty wind that Southampton is known for.

Yesterday (Tuesday) we loaded our boat into a container on its way to ISRAEL. Really looking forward to it and hoping for some good training sessions in great weather conditions, preparing us for our next regatta in late March.

We are on TV!

לפני כחודשיים, שני צלמים ישראלים, ג׳וני בהירי ורם ליטל, טסו לסאוט׳אמפטון שבאנגליה במיוחד בשביל לצלם אותנו שטים ומדברים על הקמפיין שלנו, מחשבותינו, השאיפות שלנו ומה הן הבעיות שאיתן אנו מתמודדים כרגע.

ערוץ 1 הישראלי, אסף את כל החומר ומוכן לשדר את הכתבה ביום שבת הקרוב (02.11.2013) בתוכנית המוכרת ׳רואים עולם׳ שמתחילה בשעה 21:00.

אנחנו רוצים להודות מקרב לב לאורה פילבסקי, עורכת הכתבה, שנתנה את כל מאמציה בשביל שהכתבה תשודר.

A couple of months ago, two Israeli photographers,

Johnnie Behiri and Ram Lee-Tal, Came over to Southampton to film us sailing and speaking about our campaign, thoughts, ambitions and what are the problems we are facing.

Israeli Channel 1 has taken all the material and is ready to air the report this Saturday (02.11.2013) at 21:00 on the show ‘Roim Olam’.

We would like to say special thanks to Ora Pilewski, who gave her time efforts to edit the report and to ensure the report is aired.

The world championships in Marseille is now finished and we are now back in the UK. We had a very interesting two weeks in Marseille, training and racing.

As in other regattas, we had our moments. We had some good starts and some good upwind and downwind legs. Unfortunately the result doesn't reflect on our level of sailing as we suffered from some bad luck and we had made some small mistakes that cost us some races.

We have learned a lot from the week, and we have made some good friends that are keen to do more training with us. This is going to be really good as most of our mistakes were due to lack of training against other boats.
This month we have 2 more small regattas in Weymouth, UK, where we will be racing against all of the UK's top sailors. This is going to happen in two weeks time.

We will keep you posted.

First day of racing in Marseille saw us racing in light breeze and difficult conditions. We kept our goal of doing good starts and good boat speed, which we achieved both goals, so we are very happy about that.
The first start was very good, even too good as we got OCS (disqualification for an early start); but because they only let us know at the end of the race about it we kept going, and we did a very solid mid fleet result, only to get an OCS at the end. Not to worry though.
Second race was a bit more challenging with big wind shifts. We had a good start and good upwind. We only lost few places on small mistakes, as we are still learning the boat. We finished 23 out of the 35 boats fleet.
So pretty good first day, and hopefully we will learn from our mistakes and do better tomorrow.

Over the past few days we have been training really hard with some top teams in Marseille. Today we had our first big "test" as the practice race took place in moderate to light breeze. We had a good start and good first upwind. Then we decided to stop racing and go back to shore to get some much needed rest before the real racing starts tomorrow. 
This regatta is the biggest world championships in a decade and second biggest ever with 95 boats. We are really looking forward to start racing tomorrow and see if we are improving. it's going to be a challenge, and we are ready for it!

First day of training in Marseille before the worlds. We met up with Marcin, our coach for the regatta, set up the boat and went for a sail in very light breeze (4-6 knots) and small swell. We had a good session learning a lot from Marcin, improving our pre start and light wind sailing. We are looking forward for tomorrow to keep working, improving and test ourselves against the best teams in the world.

We are back in the UK after a great week racing at the Rolex Maxi Worlds in Porto Cervo, finishing 3rd in class. Now back to full time training until the 49er Worlds in Marseille, France in a couple of weeks... In the meantime please watch us taking part in the class's development program.

We would like to thank the two photographers Johnnie and Rami that came a long distance to film a report about us for the Israeli TV these past 3 days, we had a great time.
Now without any rest we are off to Porto Cervo to race in the Maxi worlds for the next 10 days.

There was no wind today at the last day of the 49er UK nationals, so racing got cancelled. However, we had great couple of days on the water with mixed weather conditions and very competitive fleet. We had our moments with few really good starts, and few good manoeuvres. We are now back to train hard and working on the lessons learned from this championship, in preparations for the worlds.

Day two of the UK nationals took place in a very unstable weather with wind ranging from 5 to 19 knots and wind shifts of about 35 degrees, not quite the perfect sailing conditions. Today we continued with our game plan of practicing our starts, and we managed to have three really good starts out of four races, so we are pretty happy about that. The racing was anyone's game today, and the results were very mixed across the fleet. We had two good races, one reasonable and one bad race. So pretty good day.

Day one of the UK nationals saw us racing in a very competitive fleet and big breeze. Wind was gusting 29knots and the sea was very choppy and messy. Our main goal for the regatta is practice our starts. It is something that we have been training really hard on in the past month or so as this was one of our biggest problems in previous regattas. We are very happy to say that on that department we have seen a massive improvement, we had really good starts today and even winning a start. So I think it was a good day.

Last sailing session before the English Nationals is behind us, racing starts tomorrow! Wish us luck!

So here we are again, the past month have been really busy and emotional for us. We have competed in the European Championship in Denmark, drove back to our base in the UK and have been working really hard on the lessons learned in the regatta. We are now in our final stage of preparation for the UK national championship starting on Saturday; and we are looking forward to see if we have improved. Saying that, the UK nationals is just another step towards our biggest regatta of the year, the World Championship that will take place in France in late September. More updates to come...

So it's been a busy few weeks!
Earlier this month saw us racing in our first 49er regatta. This took place in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. It was great feeling to be there competing in our first regatta on our way to Rio 2016.
The regatta itself provided very challenging conditions; heavy breeze and big waves. Comparatively to our training grounds in Southampton, these were very different!
The first half of the week proved to be the most difficult, we suffered some broken kit due to the conditions. It was tough for inexperienced and experienced crews alike; thankfully we came out in one piece, unlike some others who broke themselves and couldn't carry on racing at all!
It was a successful regatta in that we took many valuable lessons from it. It was great to be up against the best crews in the world and current Olympic medallists in some of the toughest conditions we're ever likely to race in.
We are now back in the UK, training hard and focusing on the massive job list we constructed in Mallorca. We know our weaknesses and are really pleased to see that even after very short time on the boat prior to the race we also have many strengths.
It's back to sailing and gym sessions every day, and looking forward to our next event which will take place in Weymouth on June 9th.

We have finally arrived to Mallorca, Spain, so we could practice for our first important regatta - the 'Princess Sofia' which will take place at the beginning of April.
 Over winter, back in Southampton, we worked hard on our fitness and strength, as well as tried to sail as much as we could when the weather allowed - which unfortunately wasn't in our favor, so now we are very happy to be back on the water, in "warm" Spain and spend as much time in the boat as we can.
Even though we didn't get as much time sailing as we wished (due to unexpected bad weather) we were very happy to be sailing against other top teams from Italy, Germany, Holland and Sweden. These training sessions proved to be very helpful and we could see our strengths and weaknesses very clearly. Together with our coach Joaquim Malhao we could build a good program and we can already see massive improvement in our sailing.

We also got our team van and our new set of sails all branded with our sponsor's logo -  'The Reconnection'
We would like to thank them for all their support on and off the water.
We are proud and honored to represent the life changing work they do, and try to raise awareness for it in sports.

www.TheReconnection.com

So here we are again, tryig to catch up on our blog after yet another day of good training sessions.

We started off the day with a good sailing session at 18 knots of breeze followed by a gym session. We would like to thank Rick Peacock who coached us last week. Rick was a top ten 49er sailor in the world and we were lucky to have the opportunity to learn from him.
We must say that our sailing is looking much better now; and we are feeling much more comfortable in the boat in those strong conditions.
Over the weekend we had some good racing in our local sailing club with some very testing condiotions and strong breeze. It was very close racing with some of Britain's top sailors. Although we didn't win we were at the top of the fleet.
We are now looking forward for the upcoming season. We should be migrating south towards warmer climates soon with our first world cup regatta at Palma de Mallorca.
We will keep the updates coming.

Shalom,
It's been a busy month for us. We received our new toys, two GoPro cameras that now are being used in every training session on the boat; and sometimes in the gym. It is a great training aid, as we can now watch every step of every tack, gibe and every other aspect of our sailing.
We've been training really hard on and off the water, logging many (cold!) hours on the boat and we are happy to see vast improvements daily. However, we are thankful for our amazing Magic Marine kit (cheers Bret Perry!!).
The gym -and the eating- sessions are getting harder. Since the boat is very physical, we have to gain some weight. It means that if we're not on the water/in the gym/sleeping, we're trying to pack as many functional calories in as possible.
We are hugely grateful for the support of our sponsor, Dr Eric Pearl and The Reconnection Company, helping us every step of the way and sharing with us what they teach.

Please visit our Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/BrandHalevySailingTeam

Thank you everyone for following and supporting us.

Omer and Bar

First blog, first few days on the water!
The start was a little bit bumpy with some capsizes in cold water and yet, with a very steep learning curve.
After our first week of sailing we are starting to feel quite comfortable in the boat, tacks and gibes are starting to look half decent (as long as we remember to take our feet out of the foot straps) and most important, we are having fun.

Assembling the boat

The first step of sailing any boat, is managing to put it together (which was not that easy).
We received our 49er in late September. It took us a couple of days to learn the ropes (quite literally) and put it together; make it race ready.
Yes, we have taken the wings on and off a few times but after you do it once you don't forget (at least we hope so).
Lucky for us there are a few very experienced and nice 49er crews in our sailing club and they proved themselves very helpful.
We are now prepared and spending as much time on the water as possible!

Why the 49er class?

The 49er class is the most extreme of all the dingy classes; and is the fastest category in the Olympics. Due to the short circuits there is no room for error. It therefore requires a combination of the highest level of physical fitness, strategy and tactics. As well as the exciting challenge that the 49er provides; we are the first sailors to represent Israel in this category at international level. We look forward to raising the profile of 49er sailing in Israel; and to inspiring the next generation.

Meet the crew!

Skipper

Name: Omer Brand

DOB: 27/04/1981

From: Tel-Aviv, Israel

Current location: Southampton, UK

Best achievements: Representing Israel for many years, coming 4th in World Championships, and being part of a Volvo Ocean Race team.

I grew up surfing and sailing on the shores of Tel Aviv. From the age of 12 I was a regular in the Israel national sailing team, racing the Optimist class through to 420 and Olympic 470 classes. During this time I competed in European and world championships and staged an Olympic campaign for Athens 2004.

Moving forwards from 470 sailing I continued onto the professional 18 foot skiff Grand Prix in Australia. Here I began my professional yachting career; and competed in regattas such as the Sydney to Hobart. Around this time I received the call to move to the U.K to join a Volvo campaign for the 2008/09 edition.

After my time in the U.K. I relocated to Palma de Mallorca, Spain (where I met Bar) and continued my professional racing, competing 

in the TP52 professional circuit and in the Super Yacht circuit all around the world. 

I currently live in Southampton, UK, with my fiance Kerry; and am focusing on our Rio 2016 campaign.

Crew

Name: Bar Halevy

DOB: 10/02/1993

From: Ein-Hod, Israel

Current location: Southampton, UK

Best achievements: 3rd in Spain cup 420, 23rd J80 World championship

I began my way in the sailing world when I was 9 years old in Hapoel Sdot-Yam sailing club where I raced the optimist class and later on the 420 class for a short time.

When I turned 14 my family and I moved to Mallorca, Spain where I sailed 420 and J80 class boats.

Slowly but surely I worked my way up to the top of the Spanish fleet for the past 3 years with a new and determined crew and the help of an excellent coach.

Last year I decided to leave the dinghy sailing (which as it seems, didn't work out) and try my luck in the yachting world.

Doing my way into bigger boats I started sailing with a Spanish J80 team.

Just after the J80 World championship, me and Omer decided that we are going full on to achieve our goal.

Currently I live in Southampton, UK; giving our Olympic campaign all my time and efforts, looking forward to see where it will take us.