It was a long day in Palma with the late coming sea breeze delaying racing. Patience paid off and the second day in the Trofeo Sofia IBEROSTAR provided great racing and allowed to complete the qualification stage. A seventh race was completed for the kites who will go into medal race mode on Wednesday.

The wind played dirty tricks all day in Palma on sailors and race committees who had to juggle with big shifts and different pressure. From 4 to 20 knots, and reaching 40 in some gusts, the wind turned around the bay playing with everybody's nerves! However, the show was on with the bay covered with white caps and the 800 boats that raced their first day in the event.

The Timaru Yacht and Powerboat Club members Les and Beryl Baker have achieved a major milestone with their Noelex 25 trailer yacht Skid Mark – clocking up 1000 nights spent on board - amounting to close to three years worth of night’s afloat.

Now that the Cricket World Cup is over the focus can turn to the most important trans-Tasman battle of the year. Over Easter, the Kurnell Catamaran Club on the southern shores of Sydney’s Botany Bay is hosting the 2015 Maersk Line Paper Tiger Catamaran International Championships.

So where to begin? After our Miami trip in January, we had a good month and a half at home, getting in lots of off the water training (or in Jo’s case – also some on the water paddle-board training), lots of meetings and planning, making sure we are on track and organised – this is a rather big year for us with over two hundred days overseas. We even managed to fit in a little sailing – at the NZ 470 Nationals and Oceanbridge Sail Auckland, where we had some rather fun battles with the New Zealand boys, Paul and Dan, it was a case of match racing from 3 min to go every single start – awesome fun!!

The Jollyboat class convened at Manly again for the second year running from the 20th-22nd March to hold its National Championship. This year, in contrast to last, to be greeted by a brisk Easterly and mountainous seas.

Over 1.200 sailors from 65 countries are in Palma de Mallorca to compete in the 46th edition of the Trofeo Princesa Sofia IBEROSTAR. This international regatta has become a regular feature for worldwide sailors who will race in the 10 Olympic events, the Formula Kite, the Dragon and the 2.4 Paralympic class, from the 28th of March until de 4th of April in the beautiful bay of Palma.

New Zealand’s largest single-class regatta, the 2015 Toyota Optimist National Championships, starts at Worser Bay on Easter Friday. Over 200 sailors from four countries will compete in 14 races over five days of racing. Familes will be bringing dinghies from as far away as the Bay of Islands in the north and Dunedin in the south. Others have chartered boats from our sponsors, SailOne and Force Racing.

Here’s a look at the up-coming sailing related events around the country for the next couple of weeks. See the YNZ on-line calendar for full details of these events and those on beyond that. Are you organising an event but don’t see it listed here? Don’t miss out on some free promotion for your sailing events by adding them to the YNZ on-line calendar here.

After spending the New Zealand summer training, preparing and competing domestically the NZL Sailing Team are Europe-bound getting ready for some northern hemisphere competition.