We’re really excited to be joining Team Volvo!
Written by Hannah Diamond | 17 February 2014
Transport is a huge thing for campaigning sailors. We drive all over Europe, often 12-13 hour journeys and through the night, to get our boats to the different training and competition venues.And as well as the expense of running that sort of logistical operation, when things go wrong you have to sort it out and pay for it yourself too.
For the first year of our campaign we relied on Ben’s own van to get us, and our boats, around. Having Volvo’s support will make a huge difference because it takes the pressure off if something does go wrong and it’s super comfortable too!
For someone who gets really travel sick, and who, when I first started campaigning, used to dread doing long journeys as a passenger in the back of vans, not being able to see out of the front window and feeling horrendous, this is a godsend!
We’re in Lagos, Portugal for a week-long training camp at the moment. We’ve spent quite a bit of time on and off over here training since November. It’s somewhere our coach, Maurice Van Paardenkooper, knows from his time working with the Dutch Yngling programmme. It’s a reliable venue where we can sail pretty much everyday, there’s rarely too much or too little breeze and it’s got a good range of conditions.
The aim for this week is to take full advantage of that and get back into sailing in wavier conditions. Miami was really flat and during the regatta there wasn’t much breeze so it’s good to get something more varied, with the plan to hopefully get some good speed work in with the rest of the squad later this week.
To get bronze in Miami and start the season with a good result was such a confidence boost. We hadn’t raced since the EUROSAF Champions Sailing Cup event in La Rochelle in early October, and everyone’s been away training over the winter so we didn’t have a clue what to expect when we all came together and raced again.
Click here to read the full blog from Hannah