Our team is learning and developing its skills day by day, joining new projects in order to gain more knowledge for better client coahing in the future. After Petra's Atlatnic crossing last year with a whole female crew, when she was co-skipering the boat from Newport to Hamburg, this year she will take part at the Baltic Sprint Cup. Here you can read how it was at the first training with the new boat, but old crew strenghtened by the Croatians... 

Madeleine and I somehow managed with the owner that it was better to sleep a little bit and wait for the wind to calm down a little. It was 3 a.m. when we got up, but there was still too much wind. After a short walk to the lighthouse we all decided to try some tacks and see which course can we hold with a storm jib and motor, because the cevlar sails we did not want to damage.

We were not that slow, doing 5-7knots, it depended of the waves which are very high and short in the Baltic see, because the water is so shallow. After about one and half hour we had to gave up. Kiel seemed FAR away and participating at the regatta even farer. We were all sad, but it was important to keep the crew and the boat safe, as we have a race to sail in a month! As we came back, we lied down a little and waited until 11 a.m., our last chance to get to Kiel. All attempts were in vain!

A new plan had to be developed! We arranged all the girls to come up to Warnemünde and have a good training! The rest of the day we enjoyed on the sandy beach, walking around for kilometres and having a bath, brrrrr, how cold it was! The next day we were preparing the boat and enjoying Warnemünde. On the weekend Inken, Kirsten and Ina came, so we begun with some training. The wind? Still 6Bf, going down to 5. And it was by the end of the day so less wind that we were really jumping on those choppy waves with no boat speed at all. But we tried before all our sails, did some good maneuvers and were happy with the day.

The last day we started with less wind very early in the morning, for I had to get back to the South of Europe, to Porec. After a black cloud that reached us around noon, we had to get the storm jib up again and shorten the main sail. All over wet, but enjoying the warm water... Around 2 p.m. we packed our wet clothes and off we went, again ferry-car-plane-car, but with a slight problem inbetween: the plane was out of order, so I had to wait for over 2 hours in Hamburg and was late in Venice. Nevertheless, a really good training! It was nice seeing the old crew and exploring the new boat! I hope, we will have some good days on the Baltic Sea in few weeks.