Spring Season in Full Swing

Silver Medal at the 2022 Princess Sofia Regatta and 11th place finish at the 2022 French Olympic Sailing Week in Hyeres, France!

Our months of March and April by the numbers:

• 2nd Place at the 2022 Princess Sofia Regatta World Sailing World Cup!!
• 4th Place at the 2022 Mallorca Sailing Center Regatta
• 11th Place at the 2022 French Olympic Week in Hyeres, France
• 5th Place Overall in the World Sailing World Rankings as of May 4th, 2022

The 2022 Princess Sofia Regatta kicked off the “unofficial” start to the 2024 Olympic Quad with the vast majority of 49er teams who will be competing for the Olympic Games in attendance and was full on from start to finish. Over the course of the 5 day event, we sailed in conditions ranging from 15 – 30 knots and, at times, incredibly wavy sea-state. Overall, we are super stoked to come away from the event with our first podium finish of our careers. Across 13 races, including the medal race, we average a 5th place finish which really showed how consistently we sailed throughout the event and how well we were able to execute on our goals. This silver medal has given us immense confidence in our ability to race with the top group and really shows that we are on the path to achieving our team’s mission statement.

After a quick turnaround, we competed at the French Olympic Week in Hyeres, France. Once again, we were met with great sailing conditions ranging from 8 – 20 knots and flat water. During the 6 day event we completed 15 races and averaged a 10th place finish. Even though we came up short on the medal race by a single point, we are extremely proud of how hard we sailed all week! We started and executed our pre-race game plan incredibly well, however, we couldn’t quite come up with the correct first beat strategy, often getting it wrong, and would have to battle back through the fleet for the majority of our races. Regardless, we made good progress on our internal goals along the way and that’s what counts.

Currently, we are training and preparing for the Allianz World Sailing World Cup, which will take place in Almere, The Netherlands. The Allianz Regatta will be our third major event of the year and will be the 2nd World Sailing World Cup event of the season. We have been preparing for this event by training in The Hague with our U.S. 49er Skiff Squad Teammates, and French Olympic Week Silver Medalists, Nevin Snow and Mac Agnese, as well as our Irish and Dutch international training partners. The Hague is going to be hosting the 2023 Combined World Sailing World Championships, which will be the first opportunity for the U.S. to qualify the country for the Olympics, so we are beginning to spend time getting used to the venue and learning what we can to better prepare ourselves for the 2023 49er World Championships.

We would like to thank the Windmark Sailing Foundation, the St. Francis Sailing Foundation and all of our recent donors for all of your support in our 49er Olympic Campaign. Our success is due to your belief in and commitment to our team and we can not thank you enough! Please stay tune for more updates and photos throughout the next couple weeks both on facebook, @barrowshenkenracing, and on instagram, @hanshenken as we compete at the Allianz World Sailing World Cup in Almere, The Netherlands May 30th – June 4th!