Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Fun Sailing

We have been on the water for three days now in Barcelona. We have been getting back into a routine. Fitness in the morning, a little bit of boat work and then sailing. Yesterday we had 10-14 knots and sun and warm weather and it was gorgeous. We had a really productive training day and we also had a ton of fun. Often these two do not go hand in hand and we have been struggling this trip with the fun factor, so that was really nice! We went out and tuned up on our own and then joined in with some racing. Once we tuned up we had really good speed. We joined in late on the racing so asked our friends Sanni and Tina what the sequence and course was. Tina said it was a three minute sequence, twice around and the right was paying. So we won the boat, hit the right and rounded top five! After two races the racing was done. Then we managed to hook up with the German and Polish teams and do some tuning upwind. We were really fast and when we focused on it had really good height as well. It was so nice to know we can go fast on our own when we focus on it. We are also using the mast we used in Palma, which sets up a bit nicer than the new mast we used for Spring Cup and Hyeres. Today we had to move venues as we are racing out of the Barcelona International Sailing Center and not the Olympic Port. We hit the water a bit later after fixing a few things on the boat. Mackay Boats was kind enough to mail us new auto-bailer flaps free of charge so our boat doesn't take on water anymore! We went out and tuned up with the Ecuador boys. Light wind and BIG waves made the conditions very tricky. Trying to keep the sails powered up but also go fast and high. We struggled with our height for awhile but eventually figured it out. We joined in on some racing again and it went pretty well. We made some big mistakes but also some big gains and our communication in the boat as well as our boat trim was very good. Most people headed in after the racing; however our dolly was being moved by the Finnish boys' coach and they were still out training so we couldn't go in yet. We decided to sail around for fun. A strange concept indeed; but we had done 3 hours of productive training so why not? We sailed around with our sails trimmed incorrectly and sun-tanned and looked at the Barcelona coast line. It was quite relaxing and enjoyable. We headed in and figured out the new boat storage/launching situation (the ramp is much bigger). Tomorrow we will go training in the morning and then through measurement in the afternoon. Then we will take Saturday off, short sail Sunday and then Worlds starts on Monday!

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