Two regattas down in what should be, and is proving to be, the tightest season during this Olympic cycle, perhaps the tightest in the 5 years that Chris and I have been racing together. The year before the games is always the tightest, most Nations are in qualification mode, and come next year most nations will have selected and those that don’t get the ticket to Beijing will largely slip away from the scene.

Whilst Miami in January is the first event in the calendar year Palma is the first event in the racing season, once again this event grew a little bit bigger 80 odd 49ers forced the organisers to run 3 fleets with only 10 races proposed plus the medal race it was going to be a relatively short event.

Boat park in Palma

Palma is normally the perfect event to turn winter in to summer, temperatures in the mid 20’s with light to moderate winds, this year was going to be different, it was wet and pretty cold with only the wind playing ball on the moderate front. Just as it turns winter into summer it is also the transition from a long training period into racing mode. We were looking forward to getting stuck into the racing having been working pretty hard on our sailing in the last few months.

From pretty early in the event it became apparent that the racing was going to be slightly different from normal, in particular the starts. ISAF in all there wisdom seem to think that races should not be recalled and should start at the first attempt. This led to many boats being over the line at the start time and just a few actually being disqualified. Hardly good racing, our early races were dogged by getting rolled off the line by boats that were ocs or should have been ocs. Simply put we didn’t get our heads around trying to start a race over the start line and not be seen. It seems crazy that this is an idea being promoted by the international governing body, surely this will lead to a culture of ‘its ok to cheat if you cant be seen? Lastly on this subject is I fail to see what is wrong with recalling the start of races if too many competitors are a bit keen, surely this is an example of competitiveness how many times is the start of a 100 meter race recalled due to people false starting? It’s a crazy idea…. (Rumour has it that this idea is being binned)
The ultimate outcome of our starting issues was after getting rubbish starts we then pushed too hard and scored an ocs! Ha ! With only one discard in this series we really had our backs up against the wall. And for a while it would be a struggle to make the Gold fleet let alone the medal race….

Pic Richard Langdon / Skandia team GBR

The brothers were making the early running in the event – Hansen and Hansen from Denmark and Sibellio and Sibellio from Italy. Our British teammates Stevie and Ben were picking off some pretty good scores. We mean while were trying to keep our selves out of trouble and avoid another ocs.

The last day of qualification races was memorable the wind and waves were in town for some fun sailing, we needed some good scores to get us in the picture for the final series and what better a way to go than perfect conditions! A 1 1 2 score line sorted us out on the results board and more importantly we got through qualification with out any more discards.

But then there would be a sting in the tale! We had an incident with a French team who were clearly in our book in the wrong – they were on the give way port tack and we were on the right of way starboard tack. At the time we thought nothing of it there was no collision so there wasn’t an incident, however they saw it differently – they hadn’t seen us so we had taken them by surprise and they decided to protest! We then protested them at the same time as they were in the wrong and we had a witness so we had a strong case. Despite this they were adamant they would still protest which is a pain as one they go on late into the night and second they can go both ways, it is effectively who can lie the most convincingly. By half ten in the evening we were back on our way home having won the protest so no dramas there, but what we had forgotten to do was sign the sheet that says we are safely back on the shore, which incurred a 5 point penalty. Not such a good day!The gold fleet racing was tight and more often than not the best days are had by boats who get a steady run of results and are normally seen racing around in the late top ten to early teens. We had a fairly steady day, not the best and we certainly lost points to the front runners who by now included our team mates Paul Campbell James and Mark Asquith. By the end of the last day of racing we had closed the gap on the fleet although Stevie and Ben were looking pretty good with a comfortable lead of some 12 points.
With the exception of Stevie and Ben the rest of the fleet were extremely tight with just two points separating 2nd to 8th. There are two points a place in the medal race so it was effectively all equal.

The medal race was pretty whacky the wind was very unstable with large pressure differences and shifts across the course. We got a bit stuck the wrong side of the first part of the race and it was pretty tricky to get back in to contention after that, so we ended the event in 8th overall – not the best start to the season.

We took a good hard look at our sailing after this week concluding that we were in pretty good shape and needed to manage our racing a bit better. Our on the water results would have put us just a few points behind the leaders going into the last race so if we avoided errors such as signing of and managed not to start over the line, or rather in the new way not to get caught, we would been competitive. That defined the goals for the next event Hyeres in France.
The Laser coach Chris Gowers kindly drove the Touareg and 49er from Palma to Hyeres so we were free to fly home and then fly back out to France for Hyeres two weeks later.

Our training boat is sat at the sailing academy in Weymouth waiting for times such as this when we want to get a few hours sailing in during breaks in the racing season. Sail number 60 it was the tenth boat to be built in the uk and is 11 years old! Despite this it is very useful and in fantastic condition. We sailed a few days at home working on a few areas that we felt were weak in Palma. As well as fitness training and on going boat work - we have a new boat that is being prepared for the world championships, time at home is any thing but boring.

Hyeres didn’t start that well we had a 9th and a 19th in the first two races! Its really easy to get despondent about what appears to be a pretty bad day on the water, but later in the event these days prove to be pretty good. We always say you never now if it’s a bad day until the end…..

There were just two fleets in Hyeres with 38 boats in each fleet - much larger fleets than we are used too and such that with the light wind’s it is tricky to pull places back. It was likely that there would be some high scores floating about.

We stuck to the game plan and low and behold our competitors did pick up some high scores, whilst we still managed to keep the 19th as our discard. Steady results in the other races dragged our selves up the fleet and in to the lead.

We had an 11 point cushion going into the final medal race, which just proved to be sufficient for us to hold on to the lead. The Italian Sybille brothers never made it to the medal race, the helm Pietro injured his arm in a capsize which put them out of the last day of racing. That day was another fantastic day of high octane racing 14 – 18 knots of wind and big, steep, short, lumpy seas makes for tricky 49er racing, they have tendency for the bow to get stuck into the waves and the boat flip back end over front into a messy capsize!

We now move on to a weeks training in Cascais in preparation for the World Championships and then the circuit moves on to Holland for the Holland regatta. We still have a long way to go to be at, what we would like to consider, our best so there is no laurel resting for us. The Holland regatta is the last event before the Worlds and the hence the last opportunity to fine tune our racing skills, it feels like there isn’t enough time…….

SH