I returned to Cocoa Beach, Florida for some more training and the Calema Midwinters.
Midwinters went well, I finished second amongst the women.
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| Congratulations to my training partners Diana from Hungary for winning and to Laurence from Quebec! |
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I am really proud of my starts at the midwinters!
Check out the start pictured above, way ahead! I started at the boat and was moving fast at the gun. The sails just beyond me and the turquoise sails are not in the fleet.
The following week we went for a long distance sail to Melbourne and back. It took us 2 hours to get there on the river. We raced going upwind and stopped every now and then to restart. It was so much fun to race in the shifty, gusty, and narrow river, planing most of the way. After lunch we ripped back down wind to the Banana River Resort in about 30 minutes! My big lunch weighed me down and I was able to go super fast from the final bridge.
We then went to Palma De Majorca to compete in the Princess Sofia Trophy. The racing conditions were a little of everything and the forecasts were consistently wrong. The first day of the qualifying series each fleet was only able to get one race off. The women started off the racing in strong winds that were slowly dropping and increasingly gusty. Several women in both fleets being timed out. There were gusts of 20 and lulls of 4 its. I really struggled dealing with the gusty conditions and the big chop.
The second race for the yellow fleet was abandoned as the wind shut off and then the women were sent in as the wind refused to settle and finally died. The men were sent out a few hours later as the breeze started to build. The breeze consistently built throughout the first race, culminating in a 40 knot gust that took out the majority of the men's yellow fleet. While the men were racing we were sitting in the parking lot holding onto our sails so that they would not blow away and hit someone.
After a delay the wind filled in onshore and the race committee was able to do a great job of firing off three races quickly in both divisions so that we were back on schedule for day three. The rest of the week continued with breeze, but the final day we had our center boards down again.
I was disappointed with how I performed. The conditions were really tough with chop and gusts. My starts improved, but I mainly felt as though I was not in fighting shape. I think we had focused the previous weeks too much on technique over strength. I arrived to the cold feeling weak and unprepared, not ready to race.
