We must be doing something right! To be up there racing with 470 legends, the best in the world. Overall, we are very proud of our performance, being one of 2 non-olympic teams to make the medal race was a pretty empowering feeling. We held onto our 9th place overall in the medal race, the point jump to 8th was large, so we would have needed a small miracle to move up the results. We had a bit of a shocker on day 3, just couldn’t get the shifts right.ĭay 4 was beautiful plaining conditions but after rounding mark 1 in 5th our main halyard snapped!īut we finished off day 5 with a 2nd (Brit 1-2) leaving on a high at the end of the regatta. We wake up morning of day 3 and it’s immediately evident that our bodies are totally broken from the previous days! The four of us are stumbling around the apartment trying to get our shit together in a semi-daze from fatigue. We are desperately scanning the horizon for yellow marks because a wrong lay line could cost you and extra 2 (possibly lethal) gybes!īut we survived! The fleet picked up a lot of letters on the scoreboard those 2 days, but we managed to come away unscathed with 4 numbers on our score card - success! Complete silence in the boat as we put every ounce of our concentration into staying in the boat. Rounding onto the downwind - I took a glance ahead and saw that no-one had hoisted the kite - but Ryan was having none of it! We had to fully commit, put our big boy pants on and go for it! We hoist the kite and start to rip. Trying desperately to give your teammate the impression that you’ve got it totally under control - a complete lie. Communication is not an option as you use any break in the constant waterboarding to get as much air in as possible before the next blasting. We are clinging onto the side for dear life getting launched off waves and fighting against spinning out when a gust hits. A squall comes in round the windward mark and we have to do an extremely sketchy 2 sail reach to the next mark. The coach boats have problems of there own so its every man for himself out here! We couldn’t find any speed on the first upwind as we were so overpowered this was frustrating as big breeze is usually our element. In between the constant spray to the face, I can see flipped boats, mast-less hulls, and flailing limbs in between general racecourse carnage all to the calming audio of frantic sail ragging. 22 - 28 knots makes for an exciting (and pretty hectic) first day of the regatta.

We head back out to Palma to be greeted with some big breeze! Here we go again! A few days of boat prep and sail checking before day 1 and its breeze on. A wet and wild week of racing at Princess Sophia!Ģ major regattas this month - been pretty full on!

Keep it in your pants cecil