Kieler Woche, Practice Day

June 18, 2010
Kiel, Germany

After a sunny, warm start to our trip, the weather turned chilly and windy today here in Kiel for the official practice day for Kiel Week, the 6th leg of the ISAF Sailing World Cup. Despite the chilly, windy weather, the sun was out for most of the day which made for a great sailing day.

Hoisting The Kite

Photo: (c) Fried Elliott, June 2010

We arrived in Germany on the Wednesday after our USSTAG training camp at the Chicago Match Race Center over the weekend. Our flights all made it on time, inspite of some early delays in the USA, which resulted in close connections. Molly and I arrived between 8:00 and 8:30am on different flights. We found each other in Hamburg Airport, and then went on the adventure of figuring out the bus system as our way to get to Kiel. There was a direct bus to Kiel, but then we had to find the right bus that went to the sailing center. We managed and enjoyed a 50 minute ride from downtown Kiel out to the sailing center. We checked out the local city and took in the culture a little. Debbie arrived later in the day at the same time as our USSTAG teammates so she hitched a ride with them up here. It was a long day for all of us, as none of us really got much sleep on the plane and then we forced ourselves to stay awake until at least 8:30pm before we could go to bed. And that¹s all we made it to before we had to go to bed. And then slept until 8am the next morning.

On Thursday, we were not allowed to use the boats because they were getting equalized for the regatta, so we ventured out on to the water in the coach boat. We followed the Star's for a bit as they were trying to check out their new sails, and we also stopped by the Radial course to say "hi" to our USSTAG Radial sailors. We have three Radial sailors here, so they gave us their boats for a practice race. Debbie had a great start at the pin, went left, and won the race easily. Molly and Deb then hopped out of their boats and gave them back, and I sailed one more. It was great to be sailing, and fun to be back in the Radial again. I won the next race, and then decided that I would stop after that. After playing around, we went back ashore and met up with our coach Dave Dellenbaugh, to go over our notes for the event. We wrapped up the night with dinner with the rest of the USSTAG team out at the farm where they are all staying. (We are staying at a hotel nearer the venue).

This morning started a little rushed as we missed our alarms to go running; or more likely turned them off because of the lack of sleep/jetlag. We finally woke up at 8:40am with registration and weigh-in starting at 9am. As it turned out, we were fine, we weighed in and registered in less than fifteen minutes and were able to come back and eat breakfast. We were scheduled to practice at 11am today, so after breakfast we donned our sailing gear and went to rig our boats. We had a good two hour practice against the New Zealand team. The wind was up and blowing off the land so it was very puffy and shifty, but it was a good day for us to get our thinking caps working hard before the regatta starts tomorrow. The rest of the day, we reviewed our notes, and then watched the USA /Slovenia soccer match (we tied 2-2).

We are very excited to race tomorrow. We think we are in group A which means that we will be racing first tomorrow morning. Racing is scheduled to start at 11am local time (5am US ET), with an umpires' briefing at 9am. You can follow the results at the regatta website.

We would like to thank Carmeuse and Trinity Yachts for their continued support of our campaign for the 2012 Olympics in London. We would also like to thank US Sailing Team AlphaGraphics and their sponsors for their support.

Sail Hard,

Anna
Team Tunnicliffe