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| Finally In France And Ready To Race | | Print | |
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April 23, 2010 Hyeres, France
The whole team finally
arrived in France late last night, after five days of trying, for the Semaine
Olympique Francaise , the fourth stop of the ISAF Sailing World
Cup. Initially our plan was to arrive on Monday of this week, so as
to have a week of training with the Spanish and French teams. However,
our plans changed, to getting here in any way possible before racing
started, thanks to the Ejkilas;dfa;sdfjk (Eyjafjallajokull) volcano. As with
many travelers this past week, we had flights cancelled on us numerous
times, but finally we ended up finding and coordinating three flights
and other modes of transport, that eventually got us here.
On The Shuttle To The Plane To Nice
Pockets Stuffed With Luggage And Wearing
Heavy Weather Jacket
Debbie's flight was cancelled first on
Saturday night, and so she immediately got on the phone with travel
agents and Air France to try and arrange other possibilities. She was told
the earliest they could get her a flight was on Friday (today), which
would have worked but pushing it a little close to the regatta. She booked
the flight as a back up, but kept working on other plans to see if
there was anything else available. She found three seats on two different
Alitalia flights to Rome and booked them for us. Eventually, on
Monday, she got back in touch with Air France and they told her that
they could get her on a flight on Tuesday to Mardrid, via Atlanta and
Texas. When she showed up to the airport on Tuesday morning at 7am, it
turned out that somehow she still had the portion of her ticket that
took her to Atlanta, but the rest of the ticket was cancelled. The lady
at the check-in counter told her to just take the Atlanta flight and
they could probably get her out from there. She refused, obviously,
because she didn't want to get stuck in Atlanta with no options. So she
finally got them to put her standby on a direct flight to Madrid from
JFK that day departing at 5pm. As it turned out the flight she was on
had at least 15 empty seats so she had no problem getting on it. After
she got to Madrid, she was to catch another flight to Barcelona where
she was meeting up with USSTAG teammates Brian Boyd, Zach Railey, and
coach Kenneth Andreasen for a 7 hour drive to Hyeres, France.
Molly and I had a bit of a different
trip. Our flights were cancelled a couple of times after rebookings, and then
eventually the airlines couldn't get either of us on flights until next
week, so we ended up canceling our original tickets and taking the
flights to Rome. When we booked the tickets, I was booked to fly to
Chicago and then to Rome, Molly was to fly from LA to Miami, and then
to Rome. It seems a bit funny to have it booked like that, given I'm
the one that lives close to Miami, but when we were booking, we were
taking anything we could get. Molly arrived at LAX airport on Wednesday
to find they changed the plane size so they were oversold on her
flight by 30 tickets. They were looking for volunteers with a voucher
as the incentive, and given that we were in dire need to save some money
from having to change tickets, she took the option. Anyway, it meant
that instead of arriving into Miami at 8:15pm, she arrived at 12:45am on
Thursday morning. I picked her up at the airport, only to return to
the airport at 5:30am that morning for my flight to Chicago.
We got our flights to Rome, despite them being delayed a few hours before we took off, and met up there in baggage claim. We arrived at 10am, and our next flight was from Rome to Nice, France at 8pm. Once in Nice our plan was to drive to Hyeres. All was going to plan, except when we went to book into our flight to Nice, they told us they weren't starting to check in until 5pm, and that we could only check one bag at 20kg (about 44lbs) and carry-on one bag (any weight if it would fit into the overhead bin). If we had an extra bag, we would have to pay 22Euros per bag and 12Euros per Kilogram of weight. Well, we were in a bit of a panic at that point, because between the two of us we had six bags, and two of them weighed almost 50lbs each (2.2lb = 1kg). Well, after a couple of coffees to keep us awake, and some creative packing, we managed to get all of our gear into four bags total. We carefully and skillfully placed our bags on the scale when we checked in so that they weighted 21kg each, and the kind lady didn't charge us for being 1kg overweight each. Our carry-on's, however, were now quite heavy (at least 30lbs each), and our pockets were stuffed with headphones, wallets, books and anything else that we couldn't get into the bags. Molly even ended up wearing her big foul weather jacket onto the plane. Anyway, we get through and onto the plane, and slept the hour it took to get to France.
Anna, Coach Dave Dellenbaugh, Debbie
At Dinner After Practice Today (Friday)
Next, we arrived in Nice, found the car
rental place, and checked in. Just as the attendant is handing me the
keys, I reminded him that I would be returning the car to Hyeres,
France. He took back the keys and said, "We don't have a car for you."
I was like, "What do you mean? I have a reservation which says that I'm
returning it to Hyeres, and you were just giving me the keys." Anyway,
after a fight with them, and Molly crossing the street to the
competition and getting them to say that they could give us a car for
cheaper, they all of a sudden had a car for us. So go figure!!!
We had a pleasant one and a half hour drive
to Hyeres, arrived at 12:30am, and passed out in our beds pretty
quickly. We woke up at what felt like 4:30am, but was really 9:30am,
so we forced ourselves to get up and looked out the window.Anna Team Tunnicliffe |
Team Member
Representing the USA, Anna Tunnicliffe won the Gold Medal in the Women's Laser Radial dinghy at the 2008 Olympic Games in Qingdao, China. Anna was the ISAF world's Number One-ranked women's Radial sailor from April 9, 2008 to May 2010. She was voted 2009 & 2011 ISAF Rolex World Sailor of the Year. Now Anna, skipper of Team Maclaren, has teamed up with Molly O'Bryan Vandemoer and Debbie Capozzi to take on the world and go for Gold in 2012 London Olympic Games in Women's Match Racing and the team is currently ranked #1 in the ISAF WMR rankings.
