Act 5 Cardiff: Extreme Sailing Series

Well on reflection, Cardiff turned out to be a really successful event and solid performance for team GAC Pindar. Off the race track, our guests were really well looked after, had a great intro to Extreme sailing in the mornings during corporate sailing and then watched some great racing from the Vip stands. While on the race track we were probably having even more fun! Having Michael Vaughn GAC Ambassador come sailing was certainly a highlight early on in the week, particularly for Mark a big cricket fan who got to have a quick knock with the Ex England captain on the Friday. Sadly Michael quickly announced his retirement from competitive extreme sailing via twitter later that afternoon.... We had started well placing 3rd after day 1 on the thursday, after some great boathandling from the new crew (regulars Mark and Adam were joined by 49er crew Rick Peacock and olympian Anna Tunnicliffe), and some huge improvements on the start line after a good debrief with regular coach Ian Barker and the team. The only blight on a great start to the event was a nasty injury to American Anna, who suffered a 2" gash to her knee in the final race, despite it requiring 12 stitches that night she still finished the race as hard as she started race 1... the lads were most impressed. Anna's injury while nasty only kep her off the water, for day 2 as a precaution to see how it reacted over the next 24 hours. We were therefore delighted that Luke Patience fresh from winning the Silver Medal at the London Games, who had been in Cardiff visiting his Volvo sponsors for the day, was able to jump aboard for day two. Luke did a great job, loving the boat and style of racing. Understandably it took us a few races to all settle in, and we finished the day getting stronger and stronger in 4th place but touching distance of the leaders. Day 3 was a massive day for Gac Pindar with around 60 corporate guests who all got to go sailing in the mornings, with the excellent corporate crew of Luke, Ollie and chris helped by Rick and Adam. We wanted to put on a good show for our guests, and had a really solid day, Anna was back aboard and we settled straight back into thursdays rythm. Starting was our strenght today, alongside top boathandling which gave us great tactical options, we moved ahead of Red Bull by a point at the end of the day with the two Oman boats narrowly ahead. The day however was not over, for the first time we were involved in a experimental night racing alongside the neilpryde windsurfing evening racing.

This was a great success with heaps of people staying out to watch both in the VIP and along the quayside. We won the 3 race series with a 1,1,2 beating SAP extreme and Team Wales to the new title! Sunday Dawned with slightly lighter winds, we debriefed in the morning as usual and left with the clear Goals of finishing on the podium, with 1st to 6th very much in contention it looked like being a reall close finish to the Act. Before going racing however i had a great experience getting to go sailing with Hillary Lister on board her Moded Artemis 20. Hillary as a result of a rare debilitating disease has become Quadriplegic, none of this has stopped her love and passion for life and sport particularly sailing, in 2009 she solo sailed around Britain! I went sailing with Hillary in 2010 on my X40 which she loved, so it was my turn to be taken sailing and i equally loved the experience. Her Artemis 20 has been moded with a canting seat, she controls the boat with 3 tubes you suck/blow into two of te straws controlling the rudder and sheating of the sails and the 3rd allows you to scroll through 5or6 different control options to make further changes.... Hillary quickly got me to takeover the straw controls and one unplanned 360 spin and about twenty minutes later i was happily sailing around Cardiff bay, the boat handled really well and i was so impressed with clever controls. It goes with out saying how impressive Hillarys solo navigation of Britain was.... very inspirational.

Racing Kicked off really well for us with a 2,2,3 which pulled us up into 2nd temporarily before a bad start stopped the great results run, we stayed ncely in contention throughout the racing, but the penultimate race proved to be our undoing. We started again well, not quite being able to roll over SAP but still nicely in the lead 3, we were slightly pinned by team Wales which slowed us coming into the first mark, we thought we did a great job of tacking in and avoiding Alinghi who approached on starboard, unfortunaely for us a umpire saw the situation differently giving us a penalty we were not expecting. this came at the worse time, and sent us from a great attacking 3rd to the back, with all our podium rivals behind at the time we were looking in great shape, unfortunatwely the result dropped us back to 4th again, 7 points off red bull in 3rd. We miss timed the final start, but fortunately Red Bull did so worse and had to restart, so it was still possible we could make the podium, we attacked all the way around the course, needing to get two more boats between us and Redbull, unfortunately it was not to be and despite closing the gap to just 3 points we had to settle for fourth. we were of course gutted to miss out on the podium but on reflection we sailed a really solid event and were in contention throughout, it was great fun and a pleasure to skipper such a good team, it must have been a great spectacle to watch!