March 31, 2019
We have one more night before we start racing at the 50th Trofeo S.A.R. Princesa Sofia regatta here in Palma, Spain. We are excited to get on the start line tomorrow morning at 11am with the huge fleet of FX’s we have here and start racing!
We both arrived in Palma on Sunday the 24th. We landed shortly after each other, met up in the airport, and made our way to our apartment to drop our bags off. From there, we headed down to the boat park to find our boat that we will be sailing for this and the next three regattas. The boat is brand new so we had to put it all together, so despite this taking a bit of time, we were able to rig it the way we wanted to. After one and a half days of boat work, we got the boat ready to sail and we hit the water the next morning with our coach, Willie McBride.
The wind the first day of training was high teens to low 20’s sometimes gusting higher. We picked a great “break the boat in” day! But we did ok, and only had one capsize due to running into a wave in front of us. The rest of the days consisted of a little speed work and then practice races. We had different wind directions for each of the days of practice so it was great to see multiple conditions.
Its been a while since we have sailed against the international fleet and we are definitely excited to see how our winter training in Miami has worked. We feel faster and more comfortable in the boat, and now, the focus over the next couple events is racing. The big focus is learning boat placement and tactics in these boats. I’m really excited to feel comfortable enough that we can sail the boat now, and that is what we get to focus on moving forward.
We start racing tomorrow morning at 11am. We have 66 boats in our fleet so we will be sailing in split fleets for the regatta. The first couple of days are qualifiers and then the last three are the finals before the medal race. After the qualifying series the top 25 boats overall will be in gold fleet and the rest will either be one silver fleet, or silver fleet and bronze fleet depending on where you finish. You can follow along with the results! Just click here!
Thank you all for your support,
Anna and Paris
Henken | Tobias Sailing 