Diary

Tuesday 12th May 2009

Training Period Oct 08 - March 09

Over the winter months we have put in a massive amount of work on and off the water working on all the different aspects of our campaign. With on the water training in the delightful British winter, with 30 knots and snow falling, making some days extremely tough. Luckily, we also spent a good amount of time in Palma between January and April, so it wasn't all that bad!
We've also spent time putting our new boat together to make sure it's identical to our older boat. Hopefully we can take it to the Holland Regatta and then on to the Europeans in the next few weeks.
A lot of time off the water has been spent around fitness based training, including a bike camp in Palma and many hours in the gym! Another area we have been working hard on is our psychology with the RYA sports psychologist. We feel this will give us much needed confidence when it comes to the really important Regatta's of the year like the Europeans and Worlds. We have learned a lot about what makes each other perform to their best.
Overall we are really pleased with the way our training has gone and look forward to putting it into practice when it comes to competition time!!


Palma 09 – 6th

Hannah and I started our first International regatta of the year, the Princess Sofia Trophy, on the 5th April 2009. Having spent the whole winter training hard we were keen to just get an idea of the training the other competitors had put in and the standard to be set for the year to come.
Having not got our regatta off to the best of starts we were keen to stay consistent and put in a few good results to be in a good position for the medal race. However we spent a lot of time waiting for the wind, on and off the water, causing us to lose much needed races. We also gained an unfortunate OCS this together with our other up and down results, made it a very hard regatta. One race we even capsized upwind whilst in 1st place, due to a massive 30 degree windshift and gust that immediately tacked us when it hit! Luckily we still ended up 4th in that race! However we finished on a high with a strong medal race and ended up with a respectable 6th place finish overall.

Hyeres 09 – 13th

Our second regatta was the Hyeres regatta in the South of France, with fortunately better weather than the rain that had poured on us in Palma! Again we spent a fair few hours waiting for the wind and any wind we did get was unpredictable and erratic.
With high scoring from the majority of boats it was hard to keep consistent and settle for any sort of game-plan. Our results were fairly steady but we struggled for top results as we didn't feel our upwind boat speed, in the light flat water, was good enough. We sailed a very conservative regatta in the hope the results would balance out in time for the medal race. However in the last qualifying race we were on target for the medal race place, but our kite ripped from seam to seam and we were forced to sail the last reach and run without it, losing our place in the medal race. We finished 13th overall but still top Brit.


From both regatta's Katrina and I have learned an amazing amount and will be putting in the training over the next few weeks before going to the Holland regatta on the 24th May and then to the Europeans in Austria starting on the 8th June. We are really keen to get good results at both of these to improve our World Cup standing of joint 7th.

Hannah and Kat xxx

Monday 26th January 2009 - New Website

We are very excited to announce the launch of our new website.