ISAF Sailing World Cup : Hyeres

Hyeres in the south of france was the venue for the latest round of the ISAF world cup. We were pleased to maintain our encouraging progress finishing in 15th overall with some great individual race scores. Going into the last 3 races we were firmly in contention for the top ten and the medal race, we led the first race of the final day, gybe setting around the final mark and heading down wind only to realise that in the shifty wind, the top mark had been changed and we were sailing the wrong course! unfortunately this converted a 1st or 2nd into a last! We pulled back in the next race with a good 7th place finish, but perhaps pushing to hard in the final race we got a little to hard to the right hand side, and the brease we thought was there dropped off and we finished in the teens, close on points to the top ten but a few to many back.
Myself and Pinky (John Pink), then drove the boats down to Garda, where we are next training then racing this coming saturday.....

Princess Sofia

The first European grade 1 event of the year was in Palma, Majorca. This was our first proper event in the 49er, with a strong fleet missing just a couple of the classes top teams. We were therefore delighted to see ourselves in 4th place on day 1 after the first 3 races!
We found the bigger fleets and larger race courses, much more agreeable than the short boathandling intensive courses we have been practicing on. Our starting and boathandling is by far our biggest weekness, hence we have often been trailing the other british boats regularly in training, however our race skills are transfering across well from tornado racing, and it was great to lead the other british guys for the first few days.
We eventually slipped down to 18th overall after, a bad final day (a left hand race track really showed up our starting weaknesses) but were very positive with the potential we showed in the varied conditions across the week.
Next up is Hyeres olympic sailing week, this can be notoriously windy if the Mistral winds blow, so could be a great test of our new developing skiff skills, as well as the new carbon masts!