Paul Rosenquist

This weekend my job forced me to take our 60 best dealers to an island in the archipelago and tell them all about next years news and spoil them with some Swedish specialities (dont worry, it was only food and beverages…)
Anyway that weekend would otherwise have been great for final preparations for Cannes. So how could we combine this…. well by rowing the Coastal Racing boat out to the island and back again. No big deal really. Its only 20km or so, but the navigation is tricky. Thousands of islands. Louise rowed her out. 2 hours laters she actually made it in to Finnhamn. I was really impressed that she made it out there without help of her old GPS that she used when she rowed around the entire Swedsish coast last year www.kustrodderskans.se Anyway, Sunday afternoon was my turn. It crossed my mind to just head out without a map. I have paddled the stretch a few times in a kayak. I headed of way to late…in a hauling headwind and rain. On the open fjords it was white horses, and I thought it was great excerecise in for next weekend. So damn happy I was that I brought that map. After a few km’s all the islands look the same and it is frustrating to stop rowing and puzzle out where on earth you are. Meanwhile the wind pushes the boat back in such a speed that she fills up with water through the self bailing back. Not great.
Anyway just befor dark I made it back to the harbour where Louise was waiting for me. I feel weird infor this race….During all the races this year I have been prepping myself really hard. Doing the hard work in many hard sessions in insanely intensive intervals. But now for months I have only been doing easy 1 hours sessions max one a day and I dont really feel ready to go to war at all. Damn this sucks. Sure I have done some hard rows in this heavy rowing boat…lets see what will happen!

Start list have been made available. All info on www.worldrowing.com Results will be there live as well!