Palma Update

We’ve been in Palma for one week now and we’ve had a good lead in so far. We flew into Barcelona on the 23rd. We weren’t feeling too bad because we snagged a couple rows to ourselves for our 17-hour flight to Dubai from Auckland. On arrival to Barcelona we picked up a van with some of our kiwi boys, collected our boats from a storage facility, and headed for the overnight ferry to Palma. Can confirm – there is a horrible round-about at the entrance to ferry terminal in down-town Barcelona that we went around at least twice.

We went straight to the boat park when we got to Palma to unload boats and fight for a good spot in the boat park. We then got the keys to our accommodation and went for coffee, pretty necessary when the travel fatigue starts setting in. Later that day we got our mast in the sky and started getting our boat in order. Day one done.

Day two we went for a shake down sail. It’s been a hot minute since we used our race boat ‘Thanks Mate’. It always takes a session or two in a new location, on new equipment, for everything to settle in. A mistral came through overnight which we were awake for because of jet lag. We did go down to the yacht club at 3.30am to check our boats and help right a few other teams boats that had flipped.

Then, we did four days of much need practice racing. It’s been great to get back on a start line with so many boats and getting comfortable in the fleet. Compared to racing against three boats at home there is a lot for us to gain from practice racing in our lead into Palma. It has been so much fun, and we’ve had some really competitive races. Conditions have been glamour, with 8-12 knots most sessions, and no rain in sight. Perfecto. Hopefully the good weather continues, touch wood.

Aside from yachting, it’s been really nice to catch up with our friends on the circuit who we haven’t seen in a while and to go out for Thai food with all the kiwi girls. We’ve loved operating on Spanish time with later starts since we’ve been over here. We’re also fitting in some study while we are here too.

We start racing on the 4th and we’re looking forward to seeing how we go.

B and C x