First Spanish trophy!

J80 racing this weekend in Santander in the Cantabrian Championship aka “Cpto. De Cantabria De 80”. Nice and breezy on Sunday, surfing nearly planning, 12.3kts on a wave, good for a J80! Thank you Cospe & crew =) and!…

this is a Spanish big ship cleat/bollard. (I thought it looked like a European door handle but I was corrected, though it could work as both 😉 )

First Spanish trophy! Good sailing team!

Funny note, we LITERALLY tied for 2nd/3rd. As in point for point, exact same score, even down to the throw out (the worst race score which every team gets to discount). Reminder that every very little last bit counts! Push forward all the time!

Pico de Europa!

On the way.. .. ..

I always try to have a mountain stream in my town

It’s a stone courtyard?

The CUTEST town, over the bridge & river-stone streets. Where mountains & humans choose to meet.

We’re in the clouds!

Tree

Belated Surfing Sun

Eep! Forgot to post (till now). One of these days soon I’ll write a small sneak peak into what it’s like in America’s Cup Design Team life.

Big news-s on the table recently,

– The rule came out!!

– & We (old BMQR, my team) have a new name!! (Pre-hint, it’s magical 😉 )
Story of name-founding to come (on a day I’m not drafting a post in bed on my phone before crashing after working pecularly late on a make-up-for-day-off-day). In the meantime, here are some pictures of surfing beaches & surfing prep a couple of weekends ago. Thanks Arthur, Marrie & Sebastian for loaning me gear & bringing me along the past couple weeks. Have I mentioned surfing is a blast?!? Sliiightly hooked.

And here’s a teaser sneak peak video from Madrid this weekend. There’s so much to write about! Soon soon.

#theNumberAfterTheLastPost’sOne

Otters Spanish-Edition

Week of adventure! Here’s some pictures, words & stories on their way.

Neo smarts? It’s a pen..

[NEW Tech! (our bookkeeper Christine is still flabbergasted, I’ll get there)]

One of my biggest weaknesses is my tenuous memory. I can’t remember ANYTHING (anything important that is). But I have learned (slowly) that a weakness is only a weakness if I let it be one. In other words, if I address a weakness it usually has the potential to become a strength. It just becomes a forced strength out of necessity rather than a learned preferential behavior, but ya-know that’s just a stronger incentive!

Here is my problem, I know that if I don’t write things down there is very little hope of my remembering any of the important information. So, I do lots of writing, writing to do lists (mentioned earlier), spreadsheets of people I meet, daily Journal, skype call short-hand transcripts, etc. SO, as a result I have lots and lots of random sheets of paper.

(I don’t know if anyone else has this problem, it could be just me) but the result of all my writing is that I end up with… you guessed it, lots of pieces of paper. And when does a page of notes stop being useful or useful to keep/have around? Excellent question, if I had any idea of the answer I wouldn’t need to be writing this blog post right now. My current answer is “….um, a while, but guaranteed, the week I throw it in the trash, the day after the trash is collected, I will desperately need that tiny piece of information, name, program title, etc.” So, stacks of papers & notes that live in this odd in-between stage of being sort-of useful but not useful enough to kept but dangerous to through out.

Since Miami and my incident where I had nearly everything stolen, it has been really interesting to think about how I want to re-set-up my life to maximize potential success.

One of the things I wanted a better system for was my sheets and sheets of paper.

So, the NEW TECH! #smartpen

It has funy paper, all microdots.

And a funny look, like triangular.

And does funny things, like write on paper, on a tablet, on paper, on my phone, and all at once..

Post #04, one compilation of characters at a time!

Ukulele!!! IE!!!

I have a ukulele again!!

There are some things for me that are simply a core happiness provider and I think music is one of those things for me. Something I can work on and enjoy, separate from work, separate from training.

I can guess that with the America’s Cup, which I will be joining very soon, a defined break from work miight be a good thing.

AND now, again I have my musical solace! And I have named her. Or at least working name for this week. (Please comment if you have a working name suggestion for next week) BZ – Beez Knees Bananas or Beez for short. Inspired by this picture (took to show Teddy (not the EC Teddy Bear one, my real West Coast human one)).

Yes there are bananas. Yes my ukulele is beautiful & yes she is slightly yellow.

People are kind, and it makes me happy.

Christine, Oakcliff’s bookkeeper, heard that my ukulele was stolen in Miami at the end of my FL training trip in January and thought of family friends who had bought their son a ukulele years ago.

Christine’s friend was most lovely-ly kind, they gave Christine their son’s prior ukulele for me to have! Thank you guys!

My dear Beez will be going on quite an exciting international adventure with me in less than a week!

NOTE: Good tv show (I don’t typically watch tv shows) but thiiiis one (no I’m not now addicted to Netflix) this one is by the national geographic and is called Scam Cities (Thank you Polona for the mention!) It’s about scams in foreign cities and I am learning a lot this evening. It’s all the things everyone has always said like ‘carrying something behind you is like wearing a sign saying “rob me” ‘ but watching the show, I feel like I might be gaining a little bit of a feel for situations. It’s a bit over-dramatized (tho not as bad as some) but some bits are actually really good & it might save me at least one pick-pocketing. Fingers crossed!

#04 (this may be tricky, I can’t loose track of my numbering! defeats the point of numbering! I’ll figure out a system..)

EC’s first steps outside

The bear, has, moved on, to new adventures.

Story of the bear:

EC Teddy saying goodbye to Snoops

EC going on an adventure with Mr. G-star

Quicky nap on the train

New mamma! Thank you Amanda!

And EC Teddy is off to the world outside of Oakcliff.

Best wishes Sir-EC!

 

#03 – one word at a time

“Mentoring” Folder

Oh my! I didn’t blog last night or last week! Oops. Well, things are only a mistake if one does not learn from them. So! I have learned that to successfully accomplish my goal/commitment of blogging at least once a week before Sunday night for 30 weeks….. I need to set a google reminder (at least here in the beginning!) #02 (& setting said reminder!)

On a more general topic and what I wanted to write about last week but only got so far as a draft before immediate life things distracted me (immediate life things like finding an apartment in Santander, getting an engineering laptop (thanks Terry & BMQR & Dell!), figuring out exactly when (what date) I can relocate to Spain & receiving the last few visa-prep-documents):

I learned last week at the Sailing Leadership Forum that I have three personal purposes for designing for the America’s Cup.

• Learn, a huge amount because this is going to be and exceptional opportunity
• Excellence, design an amazing boat for the team, our sponsors and the USA
• Share & Mentor, provide a porthole into what it is like as a designer in an America’s Cup team & be an accessible mentor to young sailors, girls & boys.

It’s amazing how simply saying things to people solidifies them as being true to myself. I would talk about what my next step is, (starting with BMQR) & at a pertinent point in the conversation hold up three fingers point at the first one for learn, second for excellence & third for share & mentor. As I spoke to more and more people I grew confidence & assurance of the truth of my “personal purpose”.

On my drive back north to New York state from Florida I listened to the book Grit on tape. I don’t 100% agree with the absolute dogged commitment component of Grit but there were many great take-aways from the book overall. One of my take-aways was the concept of a personal goal, a goal which all your actions work towards and which gives you purpose in life. My first draft jotted down on a sheet of paper on the console while driving is to be “a positive influence on people to enhance collaboration, teamwork & cohesiveness.” And this is where my personal goal to share & be a mentor comes from. Sharing to be a positive cohesive voice, to share what I’ve figured out and to be of help to other people!

Oh! Back to the mentoring topic (and the title of this blog, “Mentoring Folder”, my newest addition to my gmail folder email-sorting setup). After the Sailing World article two kids reached out to me, Cedric from WA & Athena from RI. It was wonderful talking to both of them, answer their questions and speak as a human link IN the sailing world. Reach out to me if you (or any (other) kids (young or old)) want to talk about experiences in the sailing world or what life is like! robynlesh (a) gmail.com (My math professor in hs/college used to use (a) instead of @ on his website to prevent phishing. No idea if it works but might as well try?)

I should probably wrap up, no one (including me if I were you) would like to read a crazy long blog post about really almost anything. #Our short focus society! I’m excited to write more about what I learned at the leadership forum but that will be later. So for now:

Too-doo-loo, until next time & exciting exciting! Lots to share in the soon to be AC world. Talk to you later!

 

Farewell to the Beach

Wow. The sailing world is litterally a WORLD. I felt like I’ve spent the last week as a college freshman at the beginning of orientation/freshman year where everyone is open to meeting everyone. I could just walk up to anyone with a beachy conference name tag around their neck and introduce myself. Extend my hand and with a (firm, or at least that’s what everyone keeps mentioning about my handshake) handshake, smile and say “Hi I’m Robyn!”

Thank you Sailing Leadership Forum!

I met and chatted with so many cool people like JJ Fetter, Georgia McDonald, Dan Jaspers, Meg Riley, Jim Campbell, (if my mind was  better with names the list would go on for an hour!) [This is how my mind works, I also chatted with the head of US Sailing, Commodore of the NY YC, members & program directors of yacht clubs and programs from Texas to Maine to WA State, President of Zim Sailing (Bob Adam), Happ Fauth (oh I do remember HIS name, probably should, Hap is the head donor for BMQR and has created the whole Spanish adventure) and I remember lots about each person except names are more likely to slide right through. It’s a bit like in baseball, a name is sliding into plate for a perfect home run! And then it just keeps sliding, right on past the plate, past the gate and out of the park.]

BUT on the plus side, names can be something to work on & I met a lot if truly wonderful people. I’m really excited to stay in touch, share my America’s Cup andventure be an accessable mentor to young kids & sailors.

Also thank you to Terry Hutchinson for the public shout-out at the America’s Cup keynote presentation. I’m really excited to join the team! (For those not at the sailing forum, I’ll explain all the details on this soon, stay tuned!)

I learned from Brian Franzo, the media keynote speaker, the importance of consistency in posting and accountability to the outside world. So! I will post at least once a week, before the end of the day Sunday each weekend, for thirty weeks.

Follow to keep up on the adventure =-)