Bermuda’s sailors are reflecting on a week of top-level competition that featured disqualifications, race wins, disappointments, elation and frustration.

Sebastian Kempe, Campbell Patton and Adriana Penruddocke represented the island at French Olympic Week, one of the biggest regattas in the world at which the best sailors in the world battle for supremacy.

Kempe did best of the Bermuda contingent, finishing 26th of the 136 ILCA 7 competitors, and that achievement can be upgraded given he was forced to fight back from being disqualified in the opening race.

“I didn’t make the week very easy for myself with a black flag disqualification in the first race,” Kempe said.

“What with that and the first few days having super light, very shifty winds, I had to really battle hard to get into gold fleet. But once I was in there, it was all good.

“The wind picked up and we had a couple of days of pretty windy conditions, which I enjoyed, so I thought I had a good week and showed a lot of promise.”

Kempe is often seen at his best in heavier winds, with his work out of the boat during the winter paying off.

“I like the wind because it’s the easiest thing to train when you don’t have other boats around,” Kempe said.

“Your speed in heavy winds is almost proportional to how much work you do off the boat, in the gym, on the bike, that sort of thing. I’ve been putting the work in all winter, so I’m super confident at the moment in the breeze. “I’m a tall guy in the boat, so that also helps.”

Kempe is starting to show consistency at the highest level, often finishing in the top 20 or 30 sailors and he is confident that breaking regularly into the top ten is within his grasp.

“It’s actually a lot closer than sometimes I think,” Kempe said. “I was leading the penultimate race of the event around Mark 1, but ended up being twelfth.

“Small things in this fleet get magnified. It’s the hardest fleet in the world and you make the smallest mistake, you very quickly lose 11 places. I had a couple of races like that, where I wasn’t really sticking in the top ten.

But that’s why I'm so confident about this event and so happy about the performance. The hardest thing in sailing is getting into the top ten during a race, so at least I'm showing that I can get into it.

“Now I've just got to figure out how to make those positions stick a little bit better and from there, we’re back to sailing at the front of fleets.”

Penruddocke agonisingly missed out on a spot in the ILCA 6 gold fleet but bounced back in style to win a couple of races in silver fleet before finishing 48th overall.

Despite the disappointment of not making it into the top echelon, she is happy with her performance as she builds towards another Olympic Games qualifying campaign.

“There was some initial disappointment not to make gold but when factoring in the conditions and my development over the years, I’m actually comfortable with how my qualifying went and it gives me confidence in the future,” she said.

“Silver fleet racing was still tight and I enjoyed the battle for the top three.”