The Netherlands is a great place. It is home to the iconic wooden shoe, but more importantly the birthplace of the naval engineering masterpiece called the leeboard that is unique to the Naples Sabot, our first racing sailboats. Throughout the event we had every condition (except for warm!), and even had a day where you could hardly take a breath without sucking in a bug, which there were so many of by the end of a race hundreds of them lay dead from being squashed or swatted out of the air.
We are USA 1770- if you happen to be next to a local you got to be in the background of a photo- if not, you were out of luck!

The qualifying series for the Delta Lloyd regatta was fairly disappointing for us. As we learned from the Princess Sofia Regatta, every point matters during the qualifying series. In Palma we squeaked into the gold fleet by a mere point, however at the Delta Lloyd we paid the price and missed the Gold fleet by a point.

Needless to say, we were very disappointed to not make the Gold fleet. However in this situation you just have to keep a cool head, and do what you can to make the most of the rest of the event. The real drawback is that you cannot break into a good position in the standings, however the silver fleet is still a great place to work on your own weak points because the competition is still very strong. Very commonly you get past World or European champions, or even Olympic Medalists with you in the silver fleet. So the rest of the regatta was dedicated to working on our starts and upwind tactics. Our situation is ideal, we have a great coach and when we put our heads into something, we improve. This regatta was no anomaly, we are now much more confident on the starting line, and our upwind communication and strategy also got much better.

In the end we finished 5th in the silver fleet, and we are really excited for our next event, Kiel Week. However before, we are heading to Weymouth, UK for a week of training with the top Swedish and Austrian teams. What a great place to work out the kinks before Kiel!

For more on the regatta, check out the event website here. Also, here are full results!

Thank you very much for all your support, we could never be over hear living out our dreams without you!

Adam and Nick