It is said "No Pain, No Gain". Image copyright Fried Elliott/www.friedbits.com
by Anna Tunnicliffe
Team Tunnicliffe arrived late last night and early this morning for the first day of the Boat US Santa Maria Cup in Annapolis, MD. Ten teams are here from four countries for this Grade 1 event, with racing scheduled to start 2nd June.
Molly and I arrived late last night but woke up early to hit the gym with our trainer Harry from Annapolis Sailing Fitness. With Harry living in Annapolis and Molly and I living far away, it's hard to fit in workouts with him, so we take the opportunity to work with him when we can. Harry worked us hard, mainly focusing on our upper bodies today, with lots of push ups, core work, and pull ups. It was a great way to start our day, and definitely woke us up.
After the gym, Molly and I met up with Debbie and Liz for regatta weigh in and registration. After weighed in, we went to eat breakfast. Our coach, Dave Dellenbaugh, arrived around 10am. We discussed what we wanted to work on and headed out to the river to practice. The wind was shifty, but good so we had a great opportunity to do what we wanted. Towards the end of the practice, the storms started to roll in, so we decided to play it safe and head in to grab some lunch.
Around 3:30 we headed back out for the pro-am regatta. The local J/22 sailors came out and the ten women's teams at the regatta raced one fleet race. It was fun to fleet race again, albeit a bit different to being on the line with that many boats, but we managed. It was also one last opportunity to practice our boat handling and tactics in a pressure situation.
The day ended with the opening ceremony and a reception in downtown Annapolis. We socialized with the sailors and said "hi" to the umpires we hadn't seen earlier in the day. We wrapped up the evening with a quick run to the grocery store, then headed home to bed.
We're up early again tomorrow morning with a 6:30am work out scheduled and then competitors' meeting at 8am. Racing is scheduled to start at 9am.
Team Tunnicliffe
Santa Maria Cup
