June 25th, 2019
Racing starts tomorrow here in Kiel, Germany at the 2019 Kieler Woche sailing week. We rigged up our boat on Monday and managed two days of practice.
We both arrived on Sunday, although Paris arrived a little later than originally planned. She had one flight left and it ended up delayed by 2.5 hours. Anna’s flights were not delayed, but just slow to get to gates, so her bags went on a different route to get here, but eventually made it.
Anna arrived first and rented a car. Since Paris was landing later (and now much later), she headed up to Kiel to the sailing venue to find the boat and the house before heading back down to Hamburg to get Paris.
Anna found the boat and gear, then went to pick up their new gear from their new sponsor Magic Marine. We are super excited to team up with Magic Marine and are looking forward to our journey to Tokyo with them! We received two large boxes of gear, and Anna thought that she could manage carrying it all back to the car, just over 800m away…lol. She managed to pack one box into one of the bags, but the wet suits weren’t going to fit in the other, so had to carry one of the boxes…it was definitely a grip workout!
Once back to the car, she headed to find the house we are staying at. She arrived at the house around 4:45, passing a grocery store on the way. She thought that she wouldn’t get the food then because if she didn’t find the house she didn’t want to drive around with food that needed refrigerated in the car. So she found the house, got the tour and then asked the owner about the grocery store and he said, oh, sorry, they close at 5pm on Sunday. EEK!! Anna quickly left after thanking the owner for the key and headed back to the store. She arrived at 5:04 an the owner was stood at the door saying sorry we are closed. She begged saying she had just arrived from the USA and had no food (and for those that know Anna personally…that’s not a good thing…) and just needed a couple things. The owner let her in so she was able to run and grab eggs, chicken, an apple and orange to hold her over. But she didn’t know what they were going to do for dinner…then remembered that the airport has a grocery store!!!!…how awesome is that!
She got in the car to go get Paris, her bags, and hopefully groceries, after having a small bite to eat. She got there, and the store was still open!!! So, she got her bags, found Paris, and left with food for dinner and breakfast!!!
After a solid nights sleep, the first full day was spent rigging the boat and then doing a training session. The weather has been amazing with the sun out and the temperature perfect. There was good wind on the first day of sailing and a little lighter on the second day of sailing. Day one we sailed by ourselves doing some straight line speed and some boat handling. Day two we lined up with the CAN team and did some speed work. They were sailing really fast and was awesome to have to work really hard to stay with them.
We are looking forward to racing tomorrow. We start at 3pm, and have 3 races scheduled. (don’t worry, the sun doesn’t set until about 11pm).
Thank you for your continued support
Paris and Anna
The last Gold medal won by an American sailor was Anna! Donate today and help us bring the USA back to the top!
Henken | Tobias Sailing 