Porto Alegre, Brazil
3-21-2009

It has been a very busy last three weeks. It started with training in the Dominican Republic for a week. I was there training with my husband Brad and we had fabulous conditions. I was working on my big breeze upwind technique and the conditions provided for us every day. I worked with one of my coaches Rulo and we got lots of video that we studied every night before the next day of training. I feel like I made big improvements in my style and am looking forward to putting it into practice in a couple of weeks.
I arrived home from the DR on the evening of the 6th, and then got on a plane at 8am on the 7th to head to Chicago for the Mount Gay Rum Speaker Series. I was accompanied by our Olympic Chairman Dean Brenner, and 2008 Olympic Silver medalist in the Finn Class, Zach Railey. We shared our experiences on the Olympic Games with the members and guests of Chicago YC. We also got to meet and talk to members of the AlphaGraphics team whose company is now our US Sailing Team title sponsor.

The event was a Saturday evening event, so I was back on a plane on Sunday to start match race practice with Dave Perry and his team on Monday for three days. Both Dave’s team and my team of Liz Bower, Molly Vandemoer and Ali Church, qualified for the Grand Finals of the Nations Cup. We will be representing the USA and North America and trying to with the overall Cup for us. During the practice, we were loaned two j/24’s and sailed from the Shake-a-leg center in Miami. Again, we had some great sailing and were accompanied one day by Bill Hardesty who offered his thoughts and comments on our skills. This was the last practice both match race teams had until we get to start practice here in Brazil.

Thursday morning, Molly and I were on a plane to head out to San Diego where the USSTAG was having our first on land team camp. We were based out of the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista. It was a very intense four day camp. Most of the USSTAG team members were there along with the U-18 and U-23 team members. When we arrived, I was given my room assignment and then told to change as I had a VO2max test coming up. I was looking forward to the test, but didn’t realize that it would be quite so soon. But I did the test and got some very useful numbers back from it that I can use for my training. Over the next three days, we were given talks by our team staff, motivational speeches from two past medalists in other sports, and put through a lot of grueling tests that made everyone very sore by the time we left.

I flew the red-eye home the night the camp ended so I could get an extra day at home before I hit the road again. So that leads me to where I am now. I have just arrived in Porto Alegre, Brazil with my match race team. Our competition starts on the 23rd and goes through the 28th. The first day is a day of practice. There are 10 women’s teams here and 10 men’s teams. On the women’s side, there are 8 teams ranked 37th or better in the World (with our team being 37th), and the 1st, 3rd, and 4th ranked teams in the world competing. It is going to be a great event with lots of chances to learn and execute what we have been practicing over the past couple of weeks. We are sponsored by Gill who outfitted our team with sailing gear for the event. We are very grateful to them for their generous support of us. I will write nightly updates to let you know how the event is unfolding. Until then, you can follow along here.

After this event, Molly and I get on a plane and fly to Palma, Spain where we hop straight into our team training camp, as we get ready for the Princesa Sophia Trophy, stage 3 of the ISAF World Cup series.

Sail hard,

Anna
annatunnicliffe.com