I love this place, but I could definitely live without the cold. JD and I are in Kiel, training with Marc Pickel and Ingo Borkowski. We have our coaches Rodney Hagebols and Hans Wallen, along with Anthony Kotoun with us.

For anybody who has not been to Kiel before, here are some things about the city you should know before your trip:

1) It’s cold bring ALL your warm foul weather gear, if you think you brought enough, pack more
2) It never gets dark, so to sleep bring your sunglasses
3) Don’t forget rule number 1

My favorite comment from a German local was, “You’re cold? It’s warm today.” We arrived last Saturday after a 14 hour flight. We made it but, JD’s bags didn’t. We lent him some sailing clothes and a clean shirt, and he was good to go. Although after two days in the same gear it was getting a bit funky. Luckily his bags finally arrived day three of the
trip. Mark Pickel organized a taxi from Hamburg up to Kiel, we slept in the taxi because we knew work was on the horizon. Lots and lots of work. We went straight to Pickel’s boatyard and began preparing the two boats for the following day of tuning and testing.

Sailing in Europe is huge! Much much bigger than in North America! The Pinta racing team (Marc and Ingo’s sponsor) has their own press team and they organized a media day. Well, I expected there might be a few reporters asking us a few questions here and there. However, there were more than 25 media reporters on hand; we spent about 2 hours with the TV, newspaper and other invited journalists. After the questions, three tenders full of press followed the two boats out on the water to film us in action.

We will get some of the footage up on the site when it comes in. Also be sure to check in at www.austinsperry.com there are lots of new photos up and videos.

Looking ahead, I will be in San Diego at the end of the month for a 5 day testing session then heading to China on June 13th.

It’s all happening, is a serious understatement!

Austin