April 2, 2019
It was the best weather we have had in Palma since we have been here! It was “warm”, the sun was out, and there was wind..not a ton of it, but enough to have some great racing. We finished the day with an 18, 6, 16 putting us in 13th place overall heading into Gold fleet racing tomorrow.
The racing was super tight in the blue fleet today and points were all over the place on the leader board. We are happy with how we sailed and learned some valuable lessons to take into the final series.
The first race we had a decent start and managed to get to the top mark around 9th. We struggled a little on the downwind and lost boats on each of the downwind. The last downwind leg of the race there were about 10 boats that crossed the line at about the same time. There was lots of yelling and screaming amongst the boats, but it was just a matter of who was going to drift across the line the fastest. Unfortunately for us, we were under a lot of boats, so we were not drifting as fast and crossed the line in 18th.
The next race was much better. We had a great start and were able to sail the beat we wanted to around the course. We sailed around the 6-7th position the whole time and finished the race in 6th place.
The last race was setting up to be a fantastic start. We both made little mistakes at about 5 seconds to go and basically lost control of the boat and started late. It was very frustrating at the time, but we moved on and got to the top mark 17th, having worked hard to pass boats. We picked up a few boats on the downwind and then lost one on the upwind. We rounded the last mark in 16th and held that position to the finish.
It was a bit of a tough day to swallow results wise because we were in positions much better than what our scores show, but we were super happy with our speed today in the lighter air and chop, which was something we have been really working on.
We are looking forward to tomorrows racing in the Gold fleet. The top 25 of the 66 boats will move to race together in the finals. With the fleet sailing how it is, the racing will be close and every point is going to matter. We are very excited to get back on the race course and battle it out with everyone.
You can check out the results here.
Thank you for your continued support,
Anna and Paris
Henken | Tobias Sailing 