Fully Foiling Fall

After competing in the Hinman and a week of pre-season training with the BU sailing team in Newport the school semester began. Back to 8am classes, practice on the Charles, and late nights in the gym and hitting the books, all things that are necessary and that I enjoy. Our first college regatta came earlier than years past landing on the first official weekend of the season and we were off traveling.


Early in the college sailing season I chose to take a break from the slower boats raced regularly on the weekend in order to travel to San Francisco There, I raced with team 13Fifty on the M32 for the Rolex Big Boat Series. We used this event to practice our large catamaran skills in preparation for our Red Bull Youth America's Cup evaluation. SF delivered powerful conditions like we expected, but we knew how to handle them and were confident in our abilities. The format for this event was different than I was used to. There were one or two races in the mixed catamaran fleet a day, which were longer and spanned the entire bay, taking over an hour to complete. Sailing in a mixed fleet was both positive and negative. It was positive in the sense that we started on the same line as another M32, an Extreme 40, and a MOD 70 trimaran, but negative in that we had to wait a long time for the slower catamarans to finish before we could start our next race. The event was moving along smoothly until the start of the second race when conditions really began to build up. Unfortunately our mast came down shortly after the starting gun went off and put an early end to our regatta. The same mast failure occurred with the other M32 later on in the same race, causing many sailors to leave the boat park less that satisfied.

On a more positive note, the remainder of the college sailing season went very well. I ended the season placing 4th in A-division at the Fall New England Championship and our women's team placed a solid 5th place in their Atlantic Coast Championship. At the beginning of this semester I was worried about how we would perform as we lost a large and talented senior class. However, we rose up to the challenge and I am very proud of our team's success. College sailing is a team effort and it takes hard work from every sailor to push each other in practice and bring out great results in regattas.

Following the conclusion of the college sailing for the semester I shifted my focus to the Red Bull Youth America's Cup. I am working with team 13Fifty in this campaign and our next step towards making this happen was to have our skills evaluated while sailing a GC32. We traveled to the base of Groupama Team France in Brest, France where we met with Hans-Peter Steinacher, one of the founders of the RBYAC. My teammates and I have written many articles on our experience during each day and I will list these at the end of this post. Mine is also linked here. As a whole this was an amazing experience both on and off the water and opened so many doors into new future sailing opportunities. We even got to practice next to the Groupama AC45 turbo!

We were also able to see some spectacular sights while in France including Mont St-Michel, Arc de Triomphe, and the Eiffel Tower. We spent a little over 12 hours in Paris enjoying delicious pastries and chocolates before heading home.

The amount of sailing I have done since summer surpasses all other semesters of school so far, and along with this comes many lessons learned. I missed a substantial amount of class for sailing opportunities and as a result, I have learned how to balance traveling with academics. I have also begun taking more specialized engineering classes and I applied their concepts while sailing the GC32 and learning to efficiently foil. Now that I can combine my studies and passion I look forward to attending each class more and more. I am entering this winter and spring ready to embrace new challenges with academics, college sailing, the RBYAC, and anything else I choose to take on.

My new Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/raviparent/

Links to all articles from trip to France

Below is my full recap of our trip to Best:

Team 13FIFTY’s trip to Brest, France was undeniably a great success and unique experience. We had an amazing time seeing the beautiful country of France as well as getting some solid training in the GC32. With two practice days in varying conditions we were well prepared before our evaluation in this larger foiling cat. Our first day of practice brought a nice light wind to start in the boat which made learning to foil easier, but the conditions quickly built. Our second practice day was much windier than the first and we began to push our limits harder, working towards foiling jibes and mark roundings. Unfortunately the wind was too strong on our third day and we had to take an unplanned rest which gave us some time to explore the town and coastline of Brest. Despite the cold weather we really enjoyed learning about the history of this town as well as embracing the French culture through dining at a local seafood restaurant.

During our evaluation we had excellent conditions with stronger wind the first day and lighter wind the second. By the very last day of sailing our whole team could agree that we had learned a substantial amount about how to sail a foiling catamaran at pace and how to execute crew-work most efficiently and effectively. Before this trip we had all foiled in smaller boats such as the Nacra 20 FCS, Flying Phantom, Moth, Waszp, and kitefoil, but only had experience sailing as a team on the M32. What made this experience exceptionally unique was that while we were ripping downwind at 30+ knots flying 10 feet above the water or hauling back upwind so we could sail back downwind again we would look along the rail and see all our good friends and teammates working hard and enjoying the ride each with a smile on our faces.

This trip to Brest meant a lot for our team. It served as our first training event in a large foiling catamaran and as our evaluation for a spot at the Red Bull Youth America’s Cup. However, this trip also means a lot to each and every one of us individually. For me this trip reminds me of how far I have come in the sport of sailing and how much more is ahead of me. I have personal aspirations to become an Olympic and professional level sailor and this trip serves as one of the first stepping stones for me to enter in to this world.

If you came to me this time last year and asked what I thought I would be doing a year later I would not have said traveling to Europe with some of the country’s best young sailors to train on one of coolest foiling cats. My development with this team really means a lot to me. At the beginning of last summer I did not have much planned outside some F18 racing and foiling catamaran training. Little did I know that this would develop into me joining a Youth America’s Cup campaign. When I first met the team I realized I knew some of the members through college and other youth sailing events, but had not been as close with them as they already were with each other. Now after several M32 events, our entire Midwest tour, more training in Newport, and this most recent trip to France I can say I fit in very well with this talented group of sailors both on and off the water.

One of my favorite parts about this team is how well we work together. We don’t have overinflated egos, we treat each other with respect, and we make decisions that are best for the success of the team. We understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses and use this to plan our roles on the boat and on shore. This breeds efficiency with our time, getting the most out of every training experience we have, and putting forth our best results.

My story with 13FIFTY should serve as inspiration to others looking to pursue a similar path in this sport. I did not expect myself to come this far so quickly, but after countless hours of hard work and the great fortune of working with such an organized team I can see myself reaching many of my sailing goals in the near future. Team 13FIFTY is looking forward to hearing of the evaluation decision in mid-December and charging forward into the New Year with new training plans and goals set.

-Ravi Parent, Standing By Boston University

Mont St-Michel

Arc de Triomphe

Paris at night

Springtime Sailing

The Spring school semester has finished and now I can focus solely on sailing. This was one of the most difficult semesters for me so far as I began taking more advanced classes within the engineering curriculum. However, I enjoyed these challenges and gained a good understanding of core engineering principles, especially in thermodynamics and the kinetics and kinematics of bodies in motion. I have begun looking ahead at course materials for next semester as I will be taking my first class towards a minor in materials science.


The BU sailing team reached many successes this spring season and despite not qualifying for the Team Racing National Championship we did qualify for the Women's National Championship and the Co-ed National Championship. All three of these events will be held in San Diego and the Co-ed Championship will be raced in 2 parts: semi-finals from May 31-June 1 and the finals from June 2-3. In order to qualify for the Co-ed National Championship we had to place in the top 9 at our own New England Conference Championship which was raced at Dartmouth. With no racing on Saturday due to a lack of wind, we had to squeeze in four races in light conditions on Sunday and I placed 3rd in A division, helping our team reach a 2nd overall finish. We were rewarded for our hard work all season at the awards ceremony where our head coach Stan Schreyer was named NEISA coach of the year. We also had 2 members of our team named 2nd team all-NEISA crews and I was named a 2nd team all-NEISA skipper. These accomplishments show how our team is quickly rising through the ranks and becoming one of the strongest in college sailing.

2nd team all-NEISA skippers

In order to practice for the National Championships our team is spending two full weeks sailing out of Cottage Park Yacht Club in Winthrop, MA. We towed our boats down the river and through the locks, rigged them at Courageous Sailing Center, and sailed them around Logan Airport to the club. Sailing out on the harbor provides us many training opportunities that could not be had on the river. We can spend much more time speed testing and fine tuning our boat settings to maximize speed and pointing ability as we have much more space to sail in a straight line. We can also practice judging laylines and making tactical decisions in current. Finally, and arguably the most significant point of all, we can sail in more consistent wind conditions. On the river we have large city obstructions causing large variations in wind direction, but out in the harbor we have a more consistent sea breeze and smoother land masses. The Tufts sailing team has joined our practices and this is very helpful as it allows us to sail all 18 boats and simulate real regatta conditions in a competitive fleet.

After Nationals I will be returning home to Florida for a short time before driving back North. I will be taking a summer class during the second session in order to stay on track with my degree and on weekends will be racing in the F18 circuit like last year. My goals for this summer include gaining more experience on foiling catamarans, Marstrom 32, and in kiteboarding. I will place links to the event page of the National Championships at the bottom of this post when they become available.

BU Sailing Team Facebook page

New England Intercollegiate Sailing Association Facebook page

Intercollegiate Sailing Association Facebook page

Shot from the Tradwinds Regatta in January.

Winters in Florida

Another academic semester has come to a close and now I am back in the sunshine state sailing catamarans on the clear, warm waters of the Sarasota Bay. Spending winter break home in Florida always provides a nice break from the cold and busy city of Boston and allows me to get some color back in my skin before I head back up for the Spring semester near the end of January. This last semester went by quickly, but a lot happened between August and December. Sailing and school kept me quite busy during the week so when the sailing season finally ended I made sure to take more trips into the city and around Boston.

During the sailing season I was able to practice 3 of our 4 scheduled days during the week and sailed a regatta every weekend, taking one Sunday off near the end of the season on a lighter competition weekend. Sailing this much has helped the entire team improve and this can be seen in our season's results. We earned top finishes and wins at many events including the Fall New England Championship at the Schell Trophy. This was a big accomplishment for us as it shows we have great potential for the Spring season and how our team is growing in strength. We may travel South to some regattas in February and March as the Charles River will most likely be frozen over and our next major event on our calendars is the Spring break trip to Miami where we spend a full week practicing on Biscayne Bay. This will be a very productive week for us as it was last year and will help us knock the rust off as we prepare for the next sailing season.

Balancing sailing and classes was tough like usual, but I made it work and ended the semester maintaining high grades. I am close to finishing the general engineering prerequisites and am excited to begin taking more specialized classes. In one of my classes this past semester I finally got into a shop to build parts and use machines, something I always love to do. As the classes get more interesting and specialized they will continue to get harder and creating the proper balance between sailing and school will become even more difficult, but this is a challenge I am always ready to tackle.

Now that I am back in Florida I have been sailing as much as I can and plan to do the Tradewinds Regatta again this year in Islamorada before school begins on the 19th. Below I have listed an ad for the F16 Viper that I have for sale. Please contact me if you know of anyone who would be interested in this boat.

F16 Viper for sale

Finishing Up Freshman Year

These past few months have been jammed full with classes, sailing, and college life. Now that summer has come I have much more free time to continue working on this website. The spring semester began after I returned to Boston from winter break. When I landed I was greeted by fresh layers of snow covering the ground and a frozen Charles River. Little did I now that my first winter in Boston would set records in snowfall and missed class days due to hazardous weather. We had a total of 5 snow days and even though they were a nice break from classes and a totally novel experience for me, I still missed being out on the river! The Boston University Dinghy Sailors (BUDS), myself included, made a few trips South to venues such as the College of Charleston and Jacksonville University for intersectional regattas. We spent our spring break training in Miami and returned to the city with some color in our skin, drawing envy from our northern friends.

We finally broke off the ice and headed out on the river in late March and as the weather warmed up we quickly returned to our regular practice schedule. The spring sailing season was shorter than the fall, but not any less packed with action and excitement. In addition to regular fleet racing style regattas I competed in some team racing events and even one sport boat promo on a J-70. Sailing on this boat and in the different style of racing provided a nice break from the typical college racing format and helped me work on skills that could be used across sailing disciplines.

Light wind practice on the river.

J-70 regatta at Coast Guard Acad.

Shoveling snow off our boat!

The BUDS ended the season at the New England Championship, our conference championship where teams qualified to compete at the National Championship. I had the opportunity to sail in 4 races in the B division and learned a lot during my short time on the water. I experienced what competing with our district's best sailors was like and could clearly see what elements of my own sailing needed the greatest attention. At the end of the regatta we missed qualifying by 3 points, but despite this loss I feel as though we grew stronger as a team. My biggest takeaway from this event was the importance of a team mindset, something I was not accustomed to when I first joined the BUDS. With all the lessons and morals learned this semester we will come back as a much stronger team next season and are ready to race our competition!

Academics have been going well so far. I was named to the Dean's List in the College of Engineering for both semesters and am taking more classes during the summer. The engineering curriculum is exhausting and I am enjoying the challenge. The courses will get progressively more difficult, but I will continue to work hard and am excited to learn much more about the mechanical world around us.

This summer in addition to taking classes at BU I will be racing in the northeast F18 circuit. So far I have sailed in the Madison Regatta and the Wickford Regatta, placing first in both with my regular F18 crew Sam Armington and we are making plans to sail together in the Hyannis Regatta later this summer. The summer weather in New England is perfect for sailing and we want to get as much time on the water up here as we can!

Racing at College of Charleston.

Volvo Ocean Race in Newport, RI.

Nacra F20 Carbon FCS sailing in Miami on Spring Break.

Post season practice with Tufts.

First Semester of College

It has been quite some time since I last posted on here, but I have been very busy in school and now as my classes are drawing to an end I have more free time and can publish more content.

Since my last post I have attended three months of school and even though this is a short period of time the transition from high school to college has been quite drastic. Academics have become much more challenging. Even though I am only taking four classes, it is still quite difficult to keep up with the course work and perform well on exams. Sailing while in school adds another level of difficulty to this task and now my time management and efficiency skills are really being put to the test. This first semester has been physically exhausting as well. After attending classes during the day, I spent my afternoons practicing as a member of the BU sailing team on the Charles River. Sailing took up the majority of my free time and on the weekends we were traveling to regattas around New England. Even though this schedule led to several late nights of studying or returning from regattas, this past semester has been very rewarding and I have created priceless memories with the new friends I have made at school.


Sailing on a collegiate team is a very unique experience. Even though I have only competed for one semester, I have still learned a great deal about who I am as a sailor and how to succeed in this type of sailing environment. Throughout this first semester I sailed at numerous venues, including:

Maine Maritime Academy
University of Vermont
University of New Hampshire
Mass Maritime Academy
MIT
Tufts University
Salve Regina University

We spent a few Wednesdays practicing on the Upper Mystic Lake at Tufts leading up to our freshman championship, the Nickerson Trophy, which was also held at Tufts. In addition to these practices, we frequently sailed on the east side of the Mass Ave Bridge with MIT, Harvard, and Northeastern. These practices were sailed in very large fleets and training with these schools provided us with more experience sailing in larger fleets. We practice regularly in the standard FJ, but some of this fall's regattas were held in other boats such as Fireflies, Larks, 420s, and Z420s.

A view from the Charles River.

Now that the fall sailing season has ended, I am using the majority of my free time to stay up to date with my studies and to explore Boston. It's starting to get cold and we've had a few days with snow so I'm hoping my Floridian blood thickens quickly! I'll be returning home for winter break in a few weeks and by that time I'll be in dire need of a break from the cold. It's shocking to think this semester is almost over, but there is still much to come in the few weeks left and I will be making the most of my time in one of the greatest cities in the world.

First regatta at Maine Maritime A.

Regatta win at Mass Maritime A.

Sailing F18s in Rye, NY.

Fireflies at MIT.

Larks at Tufts.

Last regatta of the season and a win at Salve.

The Beginning

As the summer has drawn to a close, big changes have taken place in my life. I have now packed up the catamarans, said goodbye to my friends back home, and moved on to college at Boston University. This change will also bring several new opportunities.

I left Florida for Boston a week before my classes began in order to do some pre-season practicing with the BU Sailing Team, aka the BUDS. During this week we've spent several days on the water and had the opportunity to sail in both open water conditions in Marblehead, MA as well as in protected waters at our home venue of the Charles River. I have learned a lot of new skills and refined some older ones in this short period of time; this is an indicator of how much our team as a whole will progress throughout the year. Our first regatta is in two weeks after the beginning of class.

As a new student to BU and a freshman on the sailing team, I was initially quite intimidated by what I thought were the expectations of the upperclassmen. However, the BUDS have approached all the new freshmen with open arms and have really made us feel at home at BU. This team is going to make sailing at BU one of the most memorable experiences of my life.

Club 420 Midwinters

The importance of cross training and diversification cannot be stressed enough when it comes to sailing. Every single skill required to sail a boat efficiently on the race course cannot be perfected in one single type of boat; therefore it is necessary to sail in different fleets. I have decided to spend some time in the 420 in order to work on my tactics and wind prediction. Since these boats do not sail as quickly as the F16 and F18 catamarans I am able to pay close attention to the wind shifts and spend more time in boat-on-boat situations.

I raced in the Club 420 Midwinters this past weekend with one of my teammates, Clayton Shaffer, in order to gain more experience sailing in a large fleet. With 95 boats registered, this regatta provided crowded starts that could not be simulated in a regular practice. The weather throughout the event varied between each day. On Saturday a frontal system in the atmosphere brought cool air and a very strong breeze averaging around 18 knots with occasional gusts over 25 knots. The race committee decided to send us out early Saturday morning, but we quickly returned to shore because of the rough conditions forecast for the afternoon. This worked to our advantage because we had to replace a shroud that broke on the way to the race course and were worried that we would miss the first starting sequence. We were able to get three races off by the end of the first day, but we scored an OCS the final race which hurt out position overall.

Sunday and Monday had similar conditions with a northeast breeze ranging from 5-10 knots. Our course was set fairly close to shore which made predicting the patchy breeze difficult. After all three days of the regatta we had completed 11 races and ended up finishing in 32nd overall. Even though this was not the result I had hoped to achieve, I used this regatta to show me my current areas of weakness when it comes to racing in a larger fleet.

During the upcoming weeks I will resume my regular training schedule and continue my studies as I approach my high school graduation on May 31st. I shall continue to update this site with my scholastic and athletic achievements and future plans.

The website for the Club 420 Midwinters can be found here.

Labor Day Regatta

This past weekend I participated in the 2013 Labor Day Regatta, an annual event hosted by my home club in Sarasota. I decided to compete in my Laser Radial rather than in a multihull and this proved to be a wise decision as this boat posed challenges that I had not faced during the several regattas I attended this summer. Sailing in a slower monohull  has several disadvantages. First of all, the boat does not move nearly as fast as a high performance catamaran. Also, the races take longer. Finally, the boat is sailed by one person which forces all the decisions onto the skipper. However, this boat also provided several challenges that tested my skills, taught me new techniques, and placed me in different tactical situations on the race course. By choosing to sail the Laser in this regatta I now had opportunity to practice starting more aggressively with the increased maneuverability of the boat. Also, since the boat moves more slowly through the water than a multihull, I had more time to analyze the shifts and make tactical decisions. This boat drastically slowed down the pace of racing and helped me focus on the fundamentals of boat-on-boat tactics. The weekend's sailing conditions were tough to manage as it rained in the mornings of both days of the regatta and we were presented with light and variable winds in the afternoons, however the race committee still managed to complete five races in the tough conditions. Even though I did not place as well as I had hoped and came in 6th overall, I had the opportunity to refresh some of my basic sailing skills and improve in close tactical situations and I was able to enjoy my three day weekend with my friends and teammates on the beautiful Sarasota Bay.

Sunset over the Sarasota Bay

Windy Days

This last week has provided conditions that were a little more than expected. After sailing the VX One this weekend, I had planned on sailing Sunday and Monday but both days brought wind speeds above 20 knots, keeping us Sarasota sailors on shore. While I wasn't spending time on the water, I began working on a school project for my English class. Oddly enough, this project did not directly pertain to the subject material we were going over in class; the assignment was to grow a yam or sweet potato and bring it in to school on the turn in date! So I planted my sweet potatoes and now they have grown into decently sized plants. This project has kept me busy and provides a suitable and productive distraction from my daily routine. Needless to say, while I'm not sailing I'll be tending to my sweet potatoes!

VX ONE

Today I had the opportunity to sail a VX ONE today on the beautiful Sarasota Bay. A couple of teammates and I triple-handed this boat in the medium breeze which ranged from 10 knots to the upper teens with mildly choppy waters. We raced in the One Design Midwinters, temporarily taking the place of some Sarasota Youth Sailing coaches on the boat for the day, and we ended up winning both of our races today, maintaining the lead that the SYS coaches built the previous day. This boat provided a relatively new experience to us in the realm of monohull sailing: high speeds planing downwind! As soon as we rounded the top mark we were able to send this boat flying downwind at speeds that about matched the windspeed. Today I learned how different newer concept boats are becoming and how to sail a larger, flatter-bottomed keelboat efficiently and I'm happy that I was able to work on tactical situations with my teammates and the other competitive sailors on the water.