Family tradition feeds Britannia Yacht Club sailors’ journeys to Canada Games

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A huge team of 46 Ottawa athletes are set to compete at the St. John’s 2025 Canada Summer Games in Newfoundland. The Ottawa Sports Pages will be sending out a free daily email newsletter with recaps, previews and profiles throughout the Aug. 9-24 national youth multi-sport event.

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By Tyler Reis-Sanford

Despite competing for different teams in the St. John’s 2025 Canada Summer Games, Ontario’s Brodie Sorensen and Quebec’s Evania Lovshin have a lot in common.

They both call Ottawa’s Britannia Yacht Club home, they both share a coach, and for both Sorensen and Lovshin, sailing is a family affair.

“My family is super big into sailing, my grandparents sailed, then they taught my dad how to sail, then my dad brought my mom into it,” explained Lovshin. “Ever since I was super small, I was always in a boat.”

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Lovshin joined Britannia Yacht Club at just nine years old, but it took a few years before she actually started to enjoy racing. By the time she was sailing against high-level competition, she knew that she would have to focus on developing her skills, both physically and mentally, to be able to keep up with the best of the best.

“I think last year when I qualified for this (the Canada Games) was when I finally felt like I belonged. I still have a lot to learn, so it doesn’t feel like I’m on top of the hill yet,” said Lovshin, who described herself as “famously bad” at starts. “I’m learning how much that matters, because you can only play catch up so much.”

Although the Britannia Yacht Club is located on the Ontario side of the border in Ottawa, Lovshin is excited to represent Team Quebec at the 2025 Canada Summer Games.

“Living in Chelsea, some people call it ‘fake Quebec’, they see Gatineau as a part of Ottawa,” smiled Lovshin. “It’s still a really cool opportunity, I’m proud to be for Quebec.”

Like Lovshin, Sorensen first learned to sail from his grandparents as well. Unlike Lovshin, Sorensen was hooked from the moment he first set sail on his own.

“I started when I was seven, then I did camp at Britannia for two years following that,” recalled Sorensen. “I was super passionate, so I decided to hop into racing and give that a shot.”

Since that early start, Sorensen has amassed a long list of accomplishments on the water, having won the 2024 ILCA 6 Provincial Championship, competed in the 2023 ILCA 4 Youth World Championships in Greece, competing in Italy in 2022, and placing fourth at the 2024 Canadian Youth Championships. He’ll be racing in his favourite boat, the ILCA 6, for the 2025 Canada Summer Games.

“It was a great fleet, I think that one really put it together for me,” Sorensen said about placing fourth at the nationals. “I was able to keep up with athletes at the highest level across the country, and I really put myself on the map I thought.”

To prepare himself for the physical and mental stress of a regatta, Sorensen spends three or more hours on the water at least five days a week, on top of squeezing in three or four gym sessions that are designed by a personal trainer and his sailing coach.

Weight training typically involves specialized exercises that mimic heavy wind on open water, and a high focus on the quads, core, and glutes – muscles Sorensen noted are key to maintaining control during the rigorous tests of a regatta.

“It’s stressful. There’s upwards of 60 boats on the startline,” highlighted Sorensen. “You’re going to be passing boats within a couple inches sometimes. It’s very tight racing.”

Part of what makes sailing such a physically demanding sport is “hiking”, a common technique in sailing where racers lean their bodies out over the side of the boat to counter-balance the force of the wind on the sails. Hiking is meant to keep the boat flatter, meaning more surface area is making contact with the water, which improves both speed and control. Hanging one’s entire body weight, often perpendicular to the boat itself, is far from easy however.

“I’ve done a lot of different sports – rugby, rock climbing, hockey. I’ve played them all,” said Sorensen and Lovshin’s sailing coach Nicholas Kim. “Nothing is more demanding than hiking the boat.”

Despite the obvious physical demands of sailing, Sorensen, Lovshin, and Kim all said that the mental aspect was just as important, if not more important, than the physical demands. Sailing requires strategic thinking, so much so that both Lovshin and Kim both lovingly compared sailing to chess.

“You have to think a few moves ahead at all times, even while exerting energy and being focused on controlling your boat,” underlined Kim. “It’d be like playing a game of soccer where the field is constantly changing shape and the net is moving around. The variables are different every time.”

When all is said and done, Kim said that winning comes down to one simple thing.

“In the end, the person who wins the race is the one who makes the least amount of mistakes,” he noted.