Felipe VI has left this Friday to sail in Palma aboard the "Aifos", the Navy sailboat, in the first preparatory training session for the 41st Copa del Rey Mapfre sailing that begins next Monday in the waters of the bay of the Balearic capital.
The king, wearing shorts, a cap and the team's polo shirt, embarked at the Porto Pi naval base, near the Marivent Palace, and after greeting all the crew members, took the helm to set sail for the high seas. Felipe VI spent several hours on board the "Aifos" and returned to the military base early in the afternoon after concluding the training session.
The head of state will participate starting Monday in the Copa del Rey Mapfre sailing, a competition that he has never won, in which "Aifos" (the name Sofía spelled backwards) starts as one of the favorites in the Majorica class ORC1.
It is expected that the monarch will sail again tomorrow and on Sunday to refine the preparation for the regattas, since during the year he does not train with the crew skippered by Admiral Jaime Rodríguez Toubes.
As is tradition, Felipe VI will preside over the awards ceremony for the different categories on August 5, when the Cup ends, at the Ses Voltes venue in the Balearic capital.
The king arrived in Palma late last Wednesday afternoon and yesterday he embarked for the first time, although he did so aboard a private sailboat, after the audiences he held with the Balearic authorities.
The other act that the monarch has scheduled next week is the reception for representatives of civil society from the Balearic Islands together with Queens Letizia and Sofía at the Marivent Palace.
Doña Letizia's first appearance in Palma is scheduled for this Sunday on the occasion of the closing gala of the "Atlántida Mallorca Film Festival", an appointment that she has attended in the last three years. The Royal House has not detailed when the queen, Princess Leonor and Infanta Sofía arrive on the island.
It is usual that during their summer stay in Mallorca, the kings and their daughters take a cultural excursion to some point on the island, but at the moment there are no clues about this year's destination.
Queen Sofía was the first to settle in the Marivent Palace a few days ago. Felipe VI's mother will make a parenthesis during her stay in Palma to attend next Monday in Motril (Granada) the act for the 30th anniversary of the death of Belgian King Baudouin, who died of a heart attack in 1993, at the age of 62, in this town when he spent his summer vacations with his wife, the Spanish aristocrat Fabiola de Mora y Aragón.
