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April 2002

Palma - Princess Sofia Trophy

The Princess Sofia trophy held in Palma, Majorca last week was the first big event of the 2002 season. Over 80 boats turned out for the Men's 470 class, including the top5 from the 2001 World championships. We were not too bothered where we finished at this regatta as despite training hard this winter we had not done much racing and so new we would be rusty. We wanted to use the event to brush up on our starting and prepare for the bigger higher ranked Hyeres regatta at the end of April.

We decided to fly out to Palma a week before the regatta to do some work on the boat and some practise on our boat handling around a course, unfortunately our plans were some what spoilt by the fact that I (Joe) was ill and after a check up from the RYA doctor we decided not to sail for 3 days to make sure I was fit and well for the start of the regatta.

The weather in Majorca in April is fairly variable but you can generally expect sunny days with temperatures around 20c. If it is sunny a sea breeze will normally develop around midday and come in at about 8-10 knots. These are the conditions we had for the first 2 days of racing, we were pleased because our starts were good, something that had been lacking last year, however we were making more tactical mistakes then usual and that was keeping us from the very front.
After the first day we were lying in 11th overall, which wasn't great, but we drew confidence from the fact that we knew where we were going wrong. The next day in exactly the same conditions we made a big improvement, again our starts were good and we made less tactical areas and got a 4th, 11th and a 2nd which took us up to 9th overall and closed the gap on the leaders.

With 2 days and 6 races left we were within striking distance of the leaders, and the forecast was for windy, shifty conditions, our favourite sailing weather. Unfortunately, the race committee deemed the conditions to be too windy and abandoned the racing, which was frustrating, as for the majority of the competitors the conditions were perfect and so we all went training anyway.

This left us with just 1 day of racing left and our chances of a come back all but gone. Luckily the wind had dropped so we were able to sail, we ended our run of good starts by starting over the line in the first race and getting a DSQ, in the last race we showed some excellent down wind speed, to go from 9th-3rd on the first downwind and then from 3rd- 1st on the last downwind, this pushed us up to 5th overall.

The event ended in tragedy when a Austrian Tornado sailor sailing with his brother was trapped under his boat when they capsized on the way to the start, once they managed to free him from under the boat he had been under there for 20 minutes and had drowned. All racing was abandoned and the prize giving was cancelled as a mark of respect. It was a sad reminder to the rest of us that there are always dangers whenever we go to the water.

Our next event is Hyeres regatta which starts on the 22nd April, it is the biggest and most prestigious of the eurolymp regattas, we won it last year and we're determined to retain it, although we will be happy if we get a top 3. Daily results will be available on www.isaf.org and I will write a report at the end of the regatta.