#TrofeoSofia – Strong Spanish winds marked a return to form for Ireland's Annalise Murphy this afternoon with three straight wins in the silver fleet of the Laser Radial class at the Trofeo Princesa Sofia in Palma. The Laser European champion swept to three emphatic victories to move up from her lowly 86th berth yesterday in the 96–boat fleet to 52nd overall, just six places off the silver fleet lead.
At the top of the gold fleet double bullets from Evi Van Acker (BEL), one of Annalise's London 2012 Olympic rivals, moved her into third overall in the Laser Radial but long-time rival Marit Bouwmeester (NED) (interviewed in the above video) still holds the lead.
Bouwmeester has only finished out of the top three once and in a range of conditions has demonstrated her versatility. On her week so far Bouwmeester said, "We started off with light wind conditions and I was having a good regatta, I was not so sharp today but hopefully I can change that through the next few days.
"It has been a lot of fun racing, there are a lot of good girls here, it's good competition."
Van Acker added a sixth to her double bullets to move up nicely whilst Tuula Tenkanen (FIN) separates the Belgian and Dutch sailor in second.
World #1 Mathilde de Kerangat (FRA) took the final race win of the day.
Unfortunately, Ireland's only gold fleet participant Belfast's James Espey in the men's Laser class ended up counting a 34, 33 and a 41 undoing much of his earlier qualifying achievements (including three top ten results) and drops from 24th to 36th as the southerly breeze hit 27–knots.
French Nacra 17 World Champion Billy Besson described racing at ISAF Sailing World Cup Mallorca – Trofeo Princesa Sofia like riding a rodeo bull as 20-25 knots meant the limits of sailors' were tested.
Southerly breeze whipping up wild winds and five metre swells pushed the nine fleets that got out racing to the max.
Fleets in the 2.4mR, 49er, 49erFX, Finn, Laser, Laser Radial, Nacra 17 and Men's and Women's RS:X got out racing with only the 470 fleets unable to hit the race course.
Irish silver fleet results in the 49er, 49erfx and Finn classes are still being computed this evening. Check later here.
The day's schedule was amended following the arrival of the US military air carrier 'Harry S Truman' in the bay of Palma. With a 1,000 meter exclusion zone and a 2,400 metre no-stopping zone, courses were moved and scheduled amended.
As winds grew stronger sailors (and surfers!) had to contend with big waves on the return to the beach after racing was over. As this facebook vid shows:
Racing resumes tomorrow as the medal race places are decided in all of the Olympic classes.
With almost 1.200 sailors representing 55 nations, the Trofeo Princesa Sofia is the Spanish event with the highest number of entries. It is the fourth stage of the ISAF Sailing World Cup, the prestigious Olympic World Cup that has already visited Qingdao (China), Melbourne (Australia) and Miami (United States). The last event of the circuit is Hyères (France) at the end of April.