Pete and Blair Sailing- World Champion NZL 49er updates from Europe

by Pete Burling & Blair Tuke on 28 Apr 2014 2013 49er World Champions, Blair Tuke and Peter Burling report from Barcelona airport – waiting for our flight to Qingdao, China.

We’re both stoked with this trip to Europe- winning both our 49er World cup regattas – both with two races to spare. Topping the podium is a feeling you don’t get tired of.

Summer in NZ was busy and fun – with the Sydney-to-Hobart race, Sail Auckland, 49er Nationals, A-class nationals and Worlds.

We picked up our VW Touareg when we arrived in Spain 5 weeks ago, big thanks to Volkswagen for this. Perfect car for getting us and the boat around.

Two weeks ago we won the Princesa Sofia regatta in Palma, Mallorca – the first major European World Cup regatta of the season - tough competition from eighty 49ers from 28 countries. The 17 races of the regatta saw a huge variety of conditions from light sea breezes to wild winds with a large swell. Skiffs aren’t easy in waves ... in race 12 every crew had at least one capsize, luckily for us we managed to win this race after being the last man standing at the finish. Nice to get the job done.

We stayed in Palma for a week’s 49er training before having 5 days away from the boats. For Pete, Marcus and Hamish this was cycling in Mallorca, on some amazing terrain – biggest mission was 125 km with 3000 m ascent on day 8. Blair and Josh went surfing in Portugal for a few days.

Then on to Hyeres, France for our second World cup regatta. We were greeted with beautiful breeze and generally blue skies. Race 1 didn’t go our way when we were in a good position but headed for the wrong top mark and overlaid the proper mark by a long way. After that we managed a consistent string of results giving us a healthy lead going into the top 10 final day which for the 49ers was 3 theatre style races. This is a great format and really makes for an exciting last day. A race win in the first of the races cemented the overall win for us.

Thanks to our coach Hamish and our training partners - Marcus and Josh for a great trip.

Check out the highlights video links – we have the yellow leads bibs, black gennaker and NZL 1 on our sail
1. Penultimate fifth day here (49ers are first minute) http://youtu.be/JG6VOPtC4nM
2. 49er medal race highlights http://youtu.be/VCpCpU5f8dc

We now fly to Qingdao, China (where Pete competed in the 2008 Olympics) to meet up with the Emirates Team NZ guys. This will be our first chance to sail for ETNZ in the Extreme 40 foot catamaran – in round 3 of the Extreme 40 World series, 1-4 May. http://extremesailingseries.com/


If you click on our facebook links there are few photos from the last few months.
https://www.facebook.com/PeteBurlingNZ?fref=ts
https://www.facebook.com/BlairTuke?fref=ts

Thanks to all our supporters and sponsors, really appreciated.

Pete and Blair