April 7th
The Trofeo Princesa Sofia regatta wrapped up yesterday. We finished in 13th overall and top American boat! We didn’t have the greatest last day of racing which moved us away from qualifying for the medal race on Saturday, so for us our racing ended Friday!
We had three races on Friday in a building breeze and swell! First, let’s just say the racing was fun and wet and got a little wild in the last race of the day as a squall came through towards the end of the race.
In the first two races of the day, we didn’t have the greatest of starts. We held a tight lane out towards the left which was where we wanted to go to, but we would have liked the freedom to put the bow down a little more.
In the first race, we were sitting about 10th when Anna missed the trap and fell off. Luckily she dropped the main sheet and Paris was able to grab it and Anna held onto the trap bungee and stayed with the boat. We didn’t capsize and got back on the boat quickly, but unfortunately lost a couple of boats. We managed to pick up one or two on the final leg to finish in 13th. The second race was similar except we both stayed on the boat that race and finished with a 16th.
Heading into the final race we needed a very good race to qualify for the medal race. We needed to get a top 5 at least. We had again a decent start and rounded the top mark in a top 10 position. We were set to gybe on a great lane back to the leeward mark where we would have picked up a couple boats who went a little too far, but then it didn’t go as planned. We started a gybe and then our leeward wing hit a wave and spun the boat and we whipped into a capsize. We lost the whole fleet and then we were playing catch up! We sailed hard despite being last by a long way knowing that anything can happen. The last downwind leg was when the squall started to come though. The wind picked up even more and made the waves exciting to navigate around. We focused on our boat and sailing fast (and upright) and ended up beating 6 boats across the line to finish in 19th.
Overall, we are happy with our performance. We had many races in the top 7 including finishes and first mark roundings. We were happy to see the work we put in February and March starting to pay off. We still have a long way to go and we know that but we are happy to see glimmers of what we are looking for.
This was the second event of our Olympic Test event and Pan American Trials, with Miami being the other event. Despite being top American at this event, we didn’t have enough points (overall positions) between us and our fellow USA teammates and they won the qualifying spots. Nevertheless, we we will keep training hard as the Olympic Trials start later this year.
We head home for a week before we head back to Genoa, Italy for the next stop on the World Sailing Cup.
Thank you all for your continued support!
Anna and Paris
Henken | Tobias Sailing 