World Cup Event #3, Princess Sofia Trophy, Palma De Mallorca, Spain

Our European season was getting ready to begin and we felt ready to race. We had worked hard since Miami OCR. We had a couple training camps in Miami and also a two physical training sessions in Colorado Springs. We even had ‘mental capacity’ training with the US Navy Seals!

We arrived in Spain on March 25^th and began preparing our boat. It was hard to remember what we had taken off the boat before shipping it to Europe from Perth, AUS, but as we looked it over, we were happy with how race ready it was.

The story of the training and racing was light wind and building waves! We had a chance to prepare for this condition in the training before hand, so we got dialed into rhythm of the swell. On the first day of the regatta we had excellent comebacks from very bad starts, posting a 12, 10. On the second day, we had one good start and one comeback, and the third day followed a similar pattern. We were in 15^th place going into the Gold fleet races and knew we would have to start better if were to move up the standings. However, starting continued to plague us. We found ourselves in the back group in the first race of finals. We almost had a good comeback but misjudged when to reconverge with the fleet. This is a strategy point we are working on with our coach, Romain. Often we reconnect with the fleet before the full strength of our shift has come. We will play this differently next regatta. In the second race, after a serious talking to, we gutted it out on the starting line and got off clean in good position. We were nearly around the mark in 7^th, when we misjudged layline and had to gybe before rounding the windward mark. Ugly! The last day of finals brought nice wind. We enjoyed the conditions, but could not find our way to the front.

We fell a short of our goals this event finishing 22^nd overall, but were able to work on some specific points that will help us in the next event.

It felt good to get back in the flow of the European events. I had been spoiled by not having to adjust to jet lag for three and a half months. After this event, we feel ready to step up our game at the next World Cup event, which will be just a couple weeks later.