trip to Cadiz

Perhaps I will surprise you a little if I now start talking about my trip to Cadiz, where I went in Easter. Although it is a bit late, I would like to tell you about it anyway.

I had to "skip" school on Friday in order to get there as early as possible. After fourteen hours in the road, we made it to Cadiz. That was a long night... We arrived at ten in the morning. We were warmly received by a lovely temperature of 26ºC. The same day, we unloaded the boats and accommodated in the hotel we were staying in.

We spent the first days training, until Wednesday, the day before the competition started, when we went to Tarifa. I really liked to go there, because it was the first time in my life I ever spotted Africa. The town was a bit like a slum, but the coast was paradisiac. Unfortunately I wasn't able to surf nor kite there, because I was with my sailing team and we wanted to stay together. 

On Thursday the Spanish Nationals started with a ridiculously light wind... on Friday we had almost 30knts and we managed to rise in the classifications, but finally we didn't make it into the gold fleet due to the disastrous result we did on Thursday. However, and although it may sound like the words of a loser, we learnt a lot and we kept on ascending positions every day.

That trip ended on Sunday, with an hilarious party night and a hard way back home... I enjoyed those days of "mini-summer" a lot and I wanted to share them with you. I really recommend to visit southern Spain, it is a beautiful zone with lovely people.

my photo

This is a photo of Pau and me sailing taken in Vilagacia d'Arousa during the Spanish championship. In the center you can see Pau hanging from the trapeze and just behind him there's me steering. On te left top there's our boat and the sails. On the background there is a boat racing against us and you can see two more 420 on the right side. Also on the right side, but forward, there's the arrival boat. The sea looks a little messy and the wind strong but not too much. 

I like this photo because it's very dynamic and of course because there's me sailing and I don't really have a lot of photos sailing. Also because it's cool and I think that I look very concentrated (I didn't realize that there was somebody taking a photo of me). My favorite part of the photo is that you can see how is a sailing day with wind, and all the sails together are very beautiful.

However it is also useful to see what do I have to improve, for example you can see that the small sail on the left is a little bit curved by the spinnaker pole. I can also see that both Pau as I have to hang more straightly so we could manage the boat better.

Anyway, I like the photo and I have to say that it is my profile picture on Facebook.

keep sailing...

This is the third post about sailing, and it won't be the last one. My intention is to keep you in contact with my sailing experience. Today I'm going to talk about the racing calendar. 

At first it could seem very hard, because I have only a free weekend a month. But once you're in, you don't need a pause, you want more and more. 

Nowadays I have about two training weekends per month and a race. However, we have several races which last for two weekends like the catalonian championship, which was this two last weekends, or the spanish championship which lasts four consecutive days. This weekend I went to the second part of the catalonian championship, and I did it quite well (in my opinion). It was a hard race. Specially last Saturday, which was windy and super cold. The wind was completely frozen and the sea even more. 

But... now that the exams have already passed I have time to think of the future, and in two weeks I'm going to Villa García d'Arousa to compete in the nation championship. It lasts for four days, but we're going there a few earlier to train and pass the material controls. So we're going at least eight days, two for journeys and six for sailing. I'm very excited because it is the first long race I'm going to without parents, with plane and... a lot of friends! It sound great. :)

Well, I'll explain that race once being there and I will tell you all the details! ;)

Sail, train, enjoy.

I've already done a post about sailing, but I would like to show you some more things. Every weekend I go training to Blanes or somewhere to compete in a race. This weekend I trained at nine o'clock with my team, because the winter wind in Blanes is quite strange, and if you want to sail, you have to wake up very early. As I know that sailing is an uncommon sport, I'll show you a short resume of how is a training day. You'll see that this Sunday (when I shot the videos) we had soft wind and flat water. These are great conditions to practice tags and jibes, and also velocity against other boats. I also have to tell you that it's been a short time that I'm sailing with this class of boat, so I still have to train a lot... Anyway, it is a good video to figure out how is training a sport such different as from we're used to see in television. I hope you enjoy it! ;)