The final leg – for the first half of the season.

Sail for gold Eurosaf regatta was to be the last event of the early season for me before a big break from racing until the Europeans in September. After Holland I managed to squeeze in a bit of time at home to prepare for the last push forwards before going into more of a training period. I then had a week of training down in Weymouth with the rest of the British team and a few foreigners. We had predominantly light winds but finished the camp with some big breeze and waves out in Weymouth bay.  Weymouth is somewhere I enjoy sailing and its now like a second home. Its nice to know where everything is and I was happy at this time of the year when I’ve been training and competing non-stop since October that we were at a familiar venue.

During sail for gold we had a mixture of conditions but unusually it was mostly light winds again with some very long days on the water. The first day with 7 hours on the water and only 1 race was hard to stay focused for, but things did improve. The format of the Eurosaf regattas means we have more races then normal and we did 4 races on the 2 middle days of the week. After 1 poor result and a disqualification for starting early I wasn’t looking too great after day 2 but managed to slowly crawl up the rankings after some good races and my 2nd international race win of the year. I qualified for the top 10 medal race on the last day of the regatta with the opportunity to move up to 8th if things went well. We had big breeze for the last day and were postponed on shore for a couple of hours. When the wind dropped enough, we were sent out and raced in 16-22 knots. I had a good start and boat speed up the first beat to round the windward mark in 4th. I dropped a place on the second lap but unfortunately made a poor decision and missed some pressure down the opposite side of the final run and dropped to 9th. I finished 10th overall in the end which I was happy with. I had felt as if something was missing and not fitting together in Garda and Holland but sail for gold felt more together and like things were clicking again. It was nice to finish the first part of the season on a high, not so much in terms of the result but because everything was coming back together.

I have been training in Weymouth the last couple of weeks and getting lots of hours in on the water and in the gym. It’s been very tiring so far but really I’m enjoying it. It feels like it has been a long time since I stayed in one place and trained for more than a couple of days so it’s been nice. I’ve got 4 more days training next week in Exmouth with the rest of the squad before heading home and having 10 days holiday. It will be good to let my mind unwind and let my body recover from all the hard training I have been doing but I’ll keeping active and trying to do some different activities. I haven’t had a proper week off from training since some time last year so I am looking forward to it. I’ve also got lots more to look forward to over the next few months. At the end of July I will be heading over to Rio for 2 weeks training to get a sense of the conditions where the 2016 Olympics will be held. It will be my first time to South America and I can’t wait to see what it’s like! After that I will have a few more weeks training before the senior Europeans in Dublin, Ireland. The next couple of months are going to fly but I’ve got lots of exciting times ahead!