Melbourne, Australia
January 14, 2008

G'day from the Lucky Country, where I’ll be racing on Port Phillip Bay this week in the annual Sail Melbourne regatta.

Crowded slipway at RBYC

Now that a week has passed, the memory of the struggle to get here is beginning to fade. Things went haywire even before I even left Fort Lauderdale when my flight to Los Angeles was cancelled. As a result, I missed my flight to Sydney and cooled my heels at LAX for ten and a half hours. Then there was that sense of anticipation as I finally settled into my seat on the plane, only to be stuck on the ground for another two hours before we finally made the 12-hour hop to Sydney. There we were shunted through immigration and customs before another flight to Melbourne, only to be met by the coach for Tania Elias Calles because Tania, who was supposed to meet me, was bringing Lisa Ross back from hospital after treatment for influenza.

After all that inactivity I had to do something positive so we got down to the yacht club the same afternoon where our training group had a scheduling meeting before I rigged up the boat and went for a sail to work out the kinks.

We’ve put together a group of five women who will train together as often as possible between now and the Olympic regatta. Tania, from Mexico, and Lisa from Canada, are part of the group, as are Sarah Blanck from Australia and Sari Multala from Finland.

I brought my road bike with me and since she recovered, Tania and I have been biking 50 kilometers every morning. The weather has been awesome with most days in the mid to high 20 deg Celsius range and sea breezes around 15 knots. We had a couple of days with hot northerly winds when the temperatures hit 40 deg Celsius. The most we’ve seen of the country was the day we went down to Mornington and sailed an 18-kilometer downwinder

When competition starts tomorrow, we’ll be racing in a mixed fleet of 70 men and women in the Laser Radial Class. The fleet includes most of the top-ranked women who are podium contenders for Qingdao. This regatta is just part of the Sail Melbourne celebration of sailing that is conducted annually in December/January with up to 30 different events organized by up to 18 different yacht clubs, many of them situated on the extensive shoreline of Port Phillip Bay. Sail Melbourne is an ISAF Grade 1 event for all 11 Olympic Classes, one of only five Grad 1 events held around the world, and the only one in the Southern Hemisphere.

Watch this space because I hope to bring you nightly reports as racing progresses during the week. As always, a a big thanks to my sponsors Carmeuse and K-Swiss for their continued support.

Sail hard
Anna