Survival at the Portugal GP1

Our last competition of 2023 comes to an end.

During our 5 days of training in beautiful Vilamoura we worked on our biggest obstacles that we took along from the europeans a month back. We put a focus on our starting and the downwinds and noticed immediately noticed improvements.

The competition presented various conditions and a strong fleet of sailors. We were able to practice several aspects we had briefed during training and showed more confidence at the start, but noticed that we are still behind in almost all areas. Many small mistakes and a bit of bad luck made it difficult for us to show our full potential once again.

When the wind picked up and the waves grew on day 2 and 3, we were struggling to perform even more and noticed that there is a lot to work on for us. For now we are debriefing the 9 effective days on the water with many learnings and improvements and are working on our fitness and weight. We are going to be back for training in 10 days after a short rest and give it our all in training.

Besides the time we spent on the water we also dedicated a large portion of our time towards our second big goal as a team: preventing plastics from polluting the oceans and cleaning its coastlines. In the course of the #abagaday challenge we managed to prevent one bag of plastics from ending up in the ocean and dissolving into micro plastics. At the end of our training we could proudly see a great difference on the coastline, having disposed pounds of plastics properly.