Adriana Penruddocke and Sebastian Kempe remained positive after a challenging day of racing in the gold fleet at the 54th Princess Sofia Trophy in Mallorca, Spain.

The Bermudian pair could not produce their best against some of the top sailors in the International Laser Class Association class yesterday.

Penruddocke ended the day 47th in ILCA 6, while Kempe was 50th in ILCA 7.

“It was a rough day today, it’s time to reset and go again tomorrow,” Kempe told The Royal Gazette. “Two more long days of sailing in this fleet and we hope to turn things around.

“We had big winds and no real rhythm so I was never able to get in the groove with the course. This fleet has the best sailors in the world as well, so you add that on top, you don’t get every detail perfect, you’re going to have a rough day.”

Penruddocke is not putting herself under too much pressure. The Olympian tried to maintain her composure.

“I know I have the speed and technique to be up in the top,” the 24-year-old said. “It will be about staying calm in the heat of the moment and just doing what I can with whatever conditions we get.”

Shaun Priestley, the pair’s coach, backed the sailors to recover from the setbacks suffered yesterday with improved performances on the last two days of racing before the medal races on Saturday.

“The guys didn’t have good scores, unfortunately. It was a tricky day,” Priestley said.

“But the sailors are now recovering and looking ahead, there’s still lots of opportunity as the points are really close. We know the venue pretty well but it produced conditions that we haven't seen before in our past few years of racing here so there was a little bit of learning that went on.

“We just didn’t get a handle on the day, the conditions were unstable and unpredictable. Adriana executed well but got the strategy a bit wrong, she struggled to handle the unstable conditions in the first race.

“She had a very good start but the wind shifted in the opposite direction. In the second race, she struggled to get off the start line so she was behind.

“On the positive side, she made gains around the course after these bad things happened. She was always making gains to get back but her opportunities were a bit limited. It was the same for Sebastian.

“Because it’s now gold fleet racing, it’s more likely that you’ll see some higher numbers. We are working really hard to get those numbers to as low as possible.

“It’s the Olympic professional circuit so they’re competing against a number of well-funded athletes.”