Staying in the loop – February - GRP Boat Repair Specialists

Team Black Tidey Sailing

Staying in the loop – February

We flew out at the beginning of Feb for a short lead into the Lanzarote International Regatta. This regatta provided great racing with all the top teams attending and the opportunity to improve our racing skills before heading to Palma. We went into the regatta with the mindset to try to win each race and to try to put a great series together. Here’s a quick day by day review of the event:

Day 1
We launched into light airs with huge swell for day 1, even so that both of us were falling over in the boat! Technique on these waves was definitely important in these conditions. We sailed the first race really well and banked a race win to start off the regatta. We had a bad start to race 2 but we managed to sail the rest of course well and picked off places, pulling the race back to a 12th which was a great counter. Overall we were going into the second day in the bronze bibs.

Day 2
Wow what a day. “The biggest waves” Sas has ever seen in her life! With also an average of 20knts, day 2 was going to be a big test day to see how well the FX fleet could get around the course. We have been working a lot on boat handling this winter so we were buzzing about our performance with no capsizes. We finished the day with a 2,4,1 moving us up to the gold bibs!

Unfortunately the wind waves and calima (dust storm from Africa) caused us not to race on day 3 as the conditions were too dangerous.

Medal race
The medal race is the final race of the event with only the top 10 teams involved. It is a double point race so the pressure is on as the leaderboard can change easily. We went into the medal race with a small lead over the Italians and Americans. We had a clear plan going into it and we executed it well, finishing the race in 4th and securing our GOLD MEDAL! It felt amazing to win our first international regatta together and we are so pleased that we can see our hard work paying off. We couldn’t have achieved so much this winter without the team around us, our coach and the British Sailing Team and of course our main sponsor, GRP Boat Repairs. A great result and hopefully the first of many!

The rest of the camp

After two days off, we were back into training to focus in on some specific skills. It was a good end to the camp and by the end we were both exhausted and ready to Lanzarote.

We have packed up our kit to get on the ferries to Palma, Majorca where we will be based for March and April, leading up to two important events for us: Princess Sofia and Hyeres regatta.