Following TeamUCan2’s successful campaign to win a medal for Canada in Beijing 2008, and the retirement of David Cook and Stacie Louttit, a new team of John McRoberts and Brenda Hopkin has been formed. This team is actively campaigning for London 2012 with the aim of bringing Gold back to BC this time.

The team spent the summer of 2010 racing in Europe. The first, and most crucial event, was the IFDS (International Federation for Disabled Sailing) World Championships in Medemblik, Holland in July. This is the first opportunity for Canada to qualify as a country (‘earn a spot’) at the Games and TeamUCan2 successfully achieved this goal. Racing was tight, against teams from Australia, the US, the UK and Asia as well as new European teams. It was our first opportunity to observe the Mark 2 Skud in action, and it was clear from the start that the new boats are fast, resulting in some challenging racing for us as we had chartered a Mark 1 boat.

We than competed in the Sail for Gold regatta at Weymouth, England, gaining valuable experience of racing at the 2012 venue and a bronze medal, along with a bronze medal in the World Cup series for 2010.

Following 2 autumn training camps in Victoria, we are now focusing on improvements to the boat (steering, seating) and have fitted a new rig to CAN14. Our next events will be in December in St Petersburg, Florida (www.spyc.org) and the Miami OCR in January 2011 (rmocr.ussailing.org)