Well after what seemed like the longest drive in the world, we are now here in sunny Palma. Having fought our way around Paris at rush hour in the morning, it was actually a little tight for our Barcelona ferry that evening. Basically only stopping for fuel we made it to Barcelona with a little time to spare and boarded the overnight ferry to Palma.
After a surprisingly good nights sleep on the ferry, we awoke to a stunning sunrise as the boat pulled into dock. A short but rather eerie drive through the morning mist from the Palma ferry port to our sailing base Arenal was all that was left to do.
Because of a few thinks Nikki had to do in the UK she was flying out to meet me in Palma, which left me a couple of days to tinker away in the sun. I actually love a bit of boat work when its warm and you can have a bit of music playing.
Following quite a lot of tinkering and numerous albums of good music, Blink was looking great and ready to go, by this stage i was very eager to get on the water so it was just as well Nikki arrived to calm the excited puppy!
We had a very nice shake down sail, made sure everything on the boat was working properly. As the sun set the wind dropped off and we returned to the beach happy to be sailing again and ready for the training regatta to start the following day.
In the build up to Palma world cup regatta at the end of the month there is always a warm up event where the teams that are out training early get a chance to have some structured racing together. This is a great opportunity for Nikki and I to do some relatively low pressure racing with all the big boys.
Today was day 1 of the warm up regatta, and for a couple of people who haven't raced together in a few years and never on the Nacra, things went quite well. Some great starts saw us mixing it at the front of the fleet, naturally there were of course a few teething problems as we went round the course for the first time together but a brilliant day to learn and grow as a team. We both returned to shore really happy with the day on the water, we had great boat speed and on the whole sailed pretty smartly. More of the same tomorrow please.
Cheers
TP