Malaga and Palma Training - Spain

Spanish fleet has started a tour of trainings in the beginning of our season. Later on a series of races are scheduled, first one in April.

MALAGA
Malaga in the south coast of Spain was the first destination. This venue has demonstrated to be a great place for us, not only for the good treatment we receive but also for the good weather. We had four great days, with enough wind to see boats going like you see in the photos.

Beginners are now a lot more engaged with the boat. But a lot of work has to be made to arrive the gold cup in a good shape.

Also, there was a lot of interest in the boat. This will come into a presentation of the boat in his next big event, hosted by local sailing federation. We met his chairman in the Palma Event two weeks later. We were surprised to see how much keen they are on promoting MPS and skiff sailing. This is great news down here, because skiff is just beginning.

Many thanks to Alejandro and his brother Guillermo for being so kind trough the whole event.
Even they let us his home...

A race later on this year is going to be held in Malaga, and we are thinking about Cadiz as a good option too.

PALMA
We used some good contacts in Princess Sofia Trophy to organize our biggest event since we are a class. Thanks to El Arenal sailing club, who let us share a few days among 49er, tornados, 470 and Finn. They all were taking part on the race.

49er crews and helms were especially curious about our boat. Even some of the Spanish Olympic team took a ride on the boat. They were amazed, just like us, thanks to a good weather days. Even we enjoyed some of the local thermal wind, the Embat. With six days we organized some training and some racing together.

We would like to thank the new Spanish 49er coach, Carlos Llamas for his great advice. Even he offered us to do some training before Gold Cup.

Manoeuvres and trimming was the main thing to do. We are a youngster fleet, but with some venerable people like Luis Portella (aged 43).

He recognized that he didn’t want to lose this boat after racing on stars and Flying Dutchman for years. We have some lesson to learn from him.

We also made some good friends. Many many, and more Thanks to Katja, who not only let his house, but also took some good pictures of the training. She is graphic designer. But what we didn’t expect is to see personalized cd, with all the photos of the event when we were leaving Palma. We were astonished.

We also met some authorities as the Andalucia´s sailing federation Chairman (South of Spain zone ). He invited us to present the boat in some races down in Malaga. There´s a lot of interest. Hope to see the translation in new boats.

Training races where held trough the event. Pablo Arandia came as the winner followed by Alejandro Sanchez and Mateo Nadal.

This great opportunity of promotion also made us to constitute a class association, with our own written statutes. This makes us the opportunity to become a recognized class by the Spanish sailing federation, so we can obtain support from them.