Amazing Americas Cup, Coaching and a little Nacra 17 Racing.....

Wow, very envious watching the AC every night, loved how sailors and non sailors alike equally loved the action! sailing was certainly the winner!  

Coaching has been busy as usual as we move towards the winter, helping out with a mixture of laser squads, my main focus is running the multihull national youth squad.  with only 5 weekends training ahead of there Youth Nationals there is heaps to pack in to each training weekend, hopefully it wont get to cold!

Lastly it was great to finally go sailing in the new Olympic catamaran.  Lucy Macgregor invited me to race with her in the final European tour evnt of the year in La Rochelle (I did warn her i had never crewed a small cat!).  Despite appalling boathandling, we were actually really fast in a straight line, arguably our windward mark positions could have seen us winning the event!  However with a lack of fitness and practice in the crewing role, we were very happy to finish a very respectable 7th with only two of the top boats from the worlds missing.  It was great fun crewing, and i certainly liked being able to make the boat go fast, and help with tactical calls from the front of the boat.  I personally feel as the class develops that the girl helm boy crew combo will win out, but i guess only time will tell!

Successful summer on the coach boat - now in SF for LV Cup watching and a little X40 sailing!

Well it's been a very successful summer so far, the way the years worked out its been other people's success which I will steal a very small part for my time in the coach boat!

Sadly with the troubles in Istanbul the X40 event I was due to be co helming with Mitch Booth for team Turkey was cancelled, which did allow some much needed work on the house back home (particularly as I've now been away for the majority of the summer!). 

So my first project was the longest 3 and a bit weeks in Italy with Musab and Hashim, from Oman Sail at the Formula 18 world championships. The big challenge was the guys lack of racing together and no real events since the previous worlds the year before (as the guys were solely sailing the x40 the wave). We had a productive two weeks of training in which we tried to balance maximising time on the water (with as much starting / racing as we could create) with staying fit and energised for the real racing!

The guys started steadily, qualifying for gold fleet in 38th spot out of around 160 boats. The guys then really stepped it up, with one of the best gold fleet series bar the top 5, we had a reall simple race strategy which Musab and Hashim executed brilliantly and so consistently when the competition was at its greatest in the gold fleet races!  The guys pulled up to 14th, arguably one of omans best sailing achievements in such a strong class - a very happy coach and sailors!

A quick pits top to recharge the batteries and I was back out to the same race venue this time to help a small squad of gbr junior sailors at there RS Feva worlds.  Qualifying was really hectic for me, with 3flights there was always boats either about to start or finishing! So knowing the venue so well was a great help. All 6 boats did really well here though qualifying for Gold fleet racing, as we discussed, the real racing began in gold fleet when racing became 3 times harder than in qualifying. Again we looked to employ fairly simple tactics, and everyone had at let two great performances in gold fleet where getting off the line was key!  A well deserved 5th and 11th for two of the teams, was great to see particularly with both boats having to deal with OCS in the finals, a outstanding improvement throughout the weak by our youngest team saw a great 21st and the less said about our Wednesday night protest ordeal the better!

Tuscany was a great spot for racing and turned out to be a great place to explore with Nicky afterwards, with nice mix of towns and countryside to relax and sightsee in!

So next up (and as I write this), I am enroute to San Francisco to sail the old BT X40, now "Smart Recruiters" on behalf of Nespresso, Emirates team NewZealand sponsor. Hopefully the nice thing about this trip will be the ability to watch and catch up with friends competing in the Americas Cup LV Finals.... Should be some spectacular sailing!

Ess Istanbul Cancelled - so summer of coaching and a little x40ing...

Unfortunately with the troubles in Istanbul, event organisers quite rightly postponed the ESS event in June. Hopefully the event will be rescheduled, but as this will cause big logistical problems with the rest of the tour, we must wait to see if this does happen or not. The postponed event did allow me some extra time to work on the new house, with painting the outside of the house the big summer aim! The highlight though must be the 3 evening club races ( two in gp14 and 1 big boat race) at poole yacht club, great to do some fun, very competitive, club racing! Today is practice race day at the F18 worlds in Grosseto, Italy. A great place with sunshine and so far 5 to 25 knts! Racing off the beach... I'm coaching the Oman F18 team, a new pairing in the f18, but who are used to sailing together on the Oman x40 The Wave. Hopefully the guys will go we'll this week, they have certainly been putting in the hard work last week, so fingers crossed for a good result! Moving into August looking forward to getting back into X40 sailing, with a new project hopefully on the cards...

After 3 years away from F18 racing, I joined Mischa De Munck for the North Sea Regatta....

A quick flight From Southampton to Amsterdam, and the guys met at Schipol Airport on Thursday night ahead of racing obn the Friday. Having not sailed together before, and being Andrews first F18 outing in over 3 years, the goals for the 4 days sailing were pretty simple, To see where we were at on the Friday and then start working on our weaker areas! Friday dawned with a NE brease of around 15knts and fairly strong tide from the NE too leading to a very simple race course, Long tack port off the line and then leave a little extra in the layline calls. We pleased to feel fairly confident in the boat together, the boat handling was fairly average, but good enough to not lose any real distance around the course and we over took boats throughout the 1st race to finish 2nd. The 2nd race, went better as we executed our desired boat end start, quickly leading out into the tide and led for the first two laps only to lose it all at the last leeward mark where Andrew clearly a bit "rusty" forgot to clip on as he jumped out on the trapease! slipping us back to third. Saturday saw far lighter winds, with the brease changing to a more westerly direction with the tide again significant. We won the pin in the 1st race, but misjudging the tidal layline, rounded 3rd, quickly taking 2nd which we maintained throughout the race. We followed up with a OCS (4th), and then a great comeback to finish 5th in the last race of the day after improving our speed throughout the day. Downwind seemed to be our best area, where we had a great advantage over all except Mischa and Bastian in the big wind. Sunday saw the best of the racing with 4 races held in a building wind. Race one began in sub 10 knts but we were soon seeing gusts upto 20knts. We again made speed improvements throughout the day, with a really big race win in the 2nd race of the day, having one the pin end again, we pulled out a large gap to win comfortably. The other 3 races were less impressive, but more fun battling the rest of the fleet, taking a 2,4,4 scoreline which moved us up to 3rd after discarding our OCS. The final day of racing unfortunately was not to happen, with really light airs on the race course, there was never enough brease to lay a course and the RC were forced to abandon racing for the day leaving us in 3rd overall. A very pleasing result considering our lack of training.

Act 2 ESS: Team Aberdeen Singapore

It was a great week with Team Aberdeen Singapore, despite a poor position on the lederboard, the racing was both fun and challenging. Sailing again with Rob Greenhalgh and Rick Peacock, was great as expected and we all learned plenty about sailing in the super light winds. Our other two crew members were local Singaporean sailors Scott and Justin, both new to X40 racing. Both guys were super keen to learn to sail the boat and as a team we got stronger each day. We had some great corporate sailing trips with the staff and clients of Aberdeen asset management, who all had a great time crewing and helming the boat. We were very well looked after by the aberdeen singapore team, with two great dinners around the very lively, and stunning city of singapore. Using a supplied boat, really highlights the differences between your own race prepared "tweaked" boat. We spent two solid weeks alligning and tweaking pindar last year to really get her upto speed, While the OC borrowed boat was perfectly sailable we were always slow against the fully coacked race team boats, particularly in thge Stadium racing where the boats manouver so often in the enclosed race areas, it is all about being able to acclerate better than the boats around you.... so we always lost the 50/50 battles. On the other hand watch ing the Alinghi team carve through the fleet, always overtaking boats rigfht upto the finish, through both good tacktics but aso excellent speed, they were deserved winners. Check out some great video and images from the week below Day 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PP5WLgH-jgo Day 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIeLO7rwxfQ Day 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCjWD1rvV6k Day 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gUO0qTHmFc

Next up...."British sailing heavyweights boost Team Aberdeen Singapore » Extreme Sailing Series"

British sailing heavyweights boost Team Aberdeen Singapore » Extreme Sailing Series

Act 1 ESS Oman... Team DUQM Oman

The first ESS event took place in Oman, over the first week of March. Being a new team sailing for a local sponsor, we were cautious with our expectations, and therefore pleased to finish 4th overall. Check out the video It was great to sail with skipper Rob Greenalgh, I new Rob from my first year racing the X40's when hi team origin finished second overall to Alinghi, with my team BT, in 3rd. Rob is both an excellent racer and also leader of a team, which was particularly important as we had next to no, training time before the event. Similarly sailing again with Olympian Will Howden fresh from finishing second overall in last years circuit was great, Ed and myself had been Tornado tuning partners to Will and Leigh who represented GBR at the Games in china, so we knew each others strengths well. Omani legend Nasser, was another sailor i have great respect for, having raced against him, Nasser having one the series twice before, as well as being a great guy. Bleddyn Mon completed our team, and really added to the crew dynamic both tactically and mechanically making the boat fast around the course. Day one saw us tied in 3rd place with Alinghi after some great racing in 15knts building to 20 by the final race, we improved each race which was a great confidence boost for the team. Day2,3 and 4 unfortunately saw some really light winds for racing, this is perhaps the hardest conditions for a team to race / sail the boat fast in and i think our lack of time in the boat together here limited us pushing for the podium which i think would have happened had the wind held. Winning the final double points race meant we finished with a bang! and comfortably claimed 4th overall.