One week to go until I fly out to Santander for the last time, for the final run in to the World Championships. Yet again it’s been a very busy month, though that seems to be pretty standard at the moment!
August started out in Rio with the last few days of training before the Test Event started. The conditions were absolutely fab – contrary to what we had perhaps anticipated we actually had really good breeze for every single day of training. Some days we were in the harbour and some days outside in the bay where we experienced some HUGE waves. There isn’t really anything between Rio and the Southern Ocean to stop the swell building. It makes for some awesome sailing conditions! I was so happy with the way I was sailing and the progress I had made in certain areas that I needed to work on.
After 3 weeks in Rio I was quite ready to head home. It was a hectic trip, trying to learn as much as possible, and then during the regatta working with the technical team but doing 6am and 9pm gym sessions every day to get my own training in. Definitely time for a bit of a break! The pack up was quite a biggy. Making sure everyone’s kit was in the right container and fully strapped down so nobody’s boat was heading off to the wrong corner of the world, with the deadline of a flight to catch… that’s pressure for you!
After a bit of time off and some training down in Weymouth, it was off again! This time Santander, for our final week long training camp before the Worlds. Most of the week we had sun and light breeze. The Australian coach organised a mini ‘coaches’ regatta’ for a few nations to join in with. We had some disproportionately large swell which came rolling in from the low pressure systems out in the north Atlantic, and combined with the light shifty winds it made for some very tricky and interesting racing.
I was happy with my boat speed in the light breeze, as that is something I have traditionally struggled with. The one day of breeze that we had I was super quick, so that’s good, too!! Very, very excited now for the Worlds. Kick off is 12th September. We should have live GPS tracking and updates, and you can follow those here: www.santander2014.com