Andrew Walsh Sailing

Happy 2012...!

2012-01-12T12:18:00.000Z

WEll 2012 is upon us, i am sure i am everyone like me, will be looking forward to the 2012 Olympics as one of the sporting highlights of the year. I cant wait to watch the sailing with so many friends involved.
The year looks exciting for me on the sailing front, ill be racing on GAC Pindar again in the extreme sailing series, i really enjoyed crewing last year, and with a strong team lineup to be confirmed soon im hopeful of a great season with Ian Williams and co.
So I kicked off my January training with a 10K with a kick, called Brutal10.co.uk, the run was on Longmoor army base in the south downs, the above picture gives a impression of the tunnel and water features much of the run went through! 6 friends did the run which was great fun if exhausting! The rest of the month has plenty of gym time for me, whilst i continue to work with both my squad of Feva, Oppy and laser sailors over the weekends...

ESS Singapore

2011-12-13T10:59:00.000Z

The final of the Extreme Sailing Series, finished on Sunday. Luna Rosa sailed an immaculate event to win the final act and claim the overall title for the year. Groupe Edmond de Rothchild finished a frustrating second overall for the 3rd season running, with Emirates team New Zealand in 3rd.
Singapore was a frustrating regatta for team GAC Pindar, while we felt we sailed well around the race track, we were not starting well which in a short 8 to 12 minute race is all important. Considering this we were quite encouraged by our racing with another new team for this event. The team which i joined in Act 4, ended the season in 9th Place Overall in a top quality field of 11. All in all a good effort for what was always going to be a "learning" year for newly crowned 2011 World Match race champion helm Ian Williams.
Personally it has been a very enjoyable season, and Like Ian, a big learning oppurtunity in a new role within the crew which I have really enjoyed.

Final ESS Singapore....

2011-12-08T15:00:00.000Z

Two days into the five day event and we are in 8th place out of the fleet of ten, but the points as always are really tight, so looking forward to hopefully moving up the leader board...
Check out the cool shot of us hull flying in front of the city, in the early evening light.

A great Final 2011 Feva Squad weekend

2011-12-06T10:24:00.002Z

A really productive weekends coaching with the Feva Class National Squad, we prioritised gust response sailing and windy boat handling over the two days. The forecast had been for upto 30 knts of winds, which fortunately we didnt get, but we were tested with 20 knt gust on the saturday. Every body improved over the two days, in particular our straight line upwind speed by working harder, talking more and being proactive with there technique.....

Next up for me is the final Extreme Sailing Series in Singapore, follow me and team GAC Pindar at: www.extremesailingseries.com

UKLA 4.7 Training Datchet water

2011-11-30T19:42:00.002Z

28 Sailors turned up to Datchet water, for the second UKLA 4.7 Class training, despite severe weather warnings for much of the UK! The training has a different racing theme for each of the 5 weekends culminating with a coach supported race weekend, at the ESSO championships.
Andrew was joined by assistant coaches Clare Chapple and Matt Goodbourn, who together focused the training around the main theme of tactics and boathandling around Mark roundings, but with winds touching 25 knts at points, windy weather boathandling was a big part of the training too!
With a building forecast on Saturday, the sailors hit the water straight away to take advantage of the lighter conditions first thing. The sailors were put through there paces on tight courses designed to put the pressure on there markroundings, and as the wind increased towards 25 knts before lunch time, all types of boathandling was put to the test. Star performer of the morning was Cameron who seemed to love the heavy winds, but everyone improved massively by pushing themselves in the strong conditions. The sailors then together broke down the skills required for a good windward and leeward mark rounding over the lunch debrief, before heading back out for the afternoon to put there ideas into practice. The afternoon, consisted of more around the course exercises with 2 sailors breaking off with 1 coach for some specific 1 on 2 coaching.

Sunday dawned with a consistent 22knts on the water, but with big gusts coming across the lake. The sailors and coaches therefore decided to use the morning for theory and then having a early lunch and long afternoon session on the water. A mixture of topics were covered including some rules of thumb wind strategy, correct setup and technique for different wind strengths and a great session from Clare and Matt on what the sail controls actually do to a rigged 4.7 sail inside the classroom…..
The afternoon was very productive with a mixture of races and exercises using the length of the lake, with the sailors split into two groups. Probably the biggest improver of the afternoon was Melissa, who really improved her upwind sailing after starting to use the sail controls properly to depower her sail.

The 3rd Open 4.7 training weekend on the 10th and 11th of December, is open to any UKLA member, and will focus on Boatspeed and starting skills across the weekend.

4th place for GAC PIndar in Almeria!

2011-11-09T13:49:00.002Z

Well the light winds of france followed the tour to spain.... Almeria went very well for the team, leading at the halfway stage and finally finishing in 4th overall.
The racing was a mix of stadium racing inside the port and outside windward leeward style courses. With Mischa back on mainsheet, myself in my favoured crewing role of trim we were joined by Brad on the bow. Brad had sailed the first event of the season where the boat struggled to perform, so was as delighted as the rest of us to hold the lead after day 3. We lost count of how many races we sailed, but in the generallly downwind/reaching starts, we had really found a strength, great starts made boat speed and tactics easy and we moved from around 7th to 1st in one day.
Day 4 was not so good for us, An OCS and some boathanding errors in the course racing outside meant a bad start to the day, which proved to be one of the longest in the series history with around ten races sailed over a 6 hour period on the water.... Suffice to say we did not spend much time debriefing the day, instead eating then hitting the hay!
So going into the last day we had slipped back to 8th overall, but with very tight points between all of the teams. We again started with w/l course racing outside. We started brilliantly with 2 firsts and a second on the offshore race course. Returning inside the port again, for the growing crowds, the format again switched back to downwind starts. We sailed really well with a 7,3,10,2,4 scoreline giving us a 2 points win over Groupe edmond de rothchild and 4th place overall.
The tour now moves to Singapore for the conclusion to the 2011 series, and we go there with a bit of belief that we can get onto the podium for the last event which would be a great way to end the year.

Apologies for lack of updates - 2011 summary

2011-11-09T08:46:00.005Z

Well 2011 started badly for me with a small operation to remove an infection caused by an ingrowing hair?! the operation did not go as planned and led to around 5 months of enforced inactivity.... (Which explains the lack of news for the first half of this year!).
During this time i was able to go coaching carefully at the weekends! working again with the excellent rya north zone feva squad who went on to dominate at the Eric Twiname Championships and helping out with the 4.7 NJS who i coached at there European championships in Holland during July before doing another road trip down to La Rochelle for the Laser radial youth Worlds. I have great memories form La Rochelle where i finished 4th myself (despite laeding for much of the week) at a Radial Worlds and also being the venue Myself and Ed first qualified for the Olympic Performance squad in the Tornado. The Sailors did great with a number of top tens and podium finishers in the different categories, if we had had a touch more wind i think they would have destroyed the opposition.
I also had some fun coaching the RYA's new womens skiff program in the RS800, the weekends were generally brease on so there were some great capsizes to watch! but was great to see the quick progression by everyone....

Luckilly for me i was all healed up by June as i was asked to do mainsheet on GAC Pindar at the fourth event of the extreme 40 world series in Boston. Having always helmed in the past this was obviously going to be a challenge switching roles but despite leaking hydraulics (there were beats where i had to just continually pump to keep the main in the same palce.. not great) i did a fairly good job and was asked to crew for the rest of the 2011 series. The team was new to the series so were pleased to finish off the bottom of the pile for this event.
Next up was Cowes... This went brilliantly for us, Mischa Heemskerk joined the team on mainsheet with me switching to Jib trim and tactics, Ian Williams continually improving on the helm and Jono Macbeth on Bow. We were a relatively heavy and strong team, Jono in particular helped make up for me still being below usual fitness levels. Great boat handling and speed meant we made the best of some good starting and tactical calls in the mainly windy week, 6 days of racing in those boats is crazy hard! We were pleased to finish in 6th place overall and the sponsors were obviously delighted to see the big improvement in results infront of there guests.
Trapani (Sciliy) followed on in september, the start of a very full on 6 weeks for the extreme 40 teams, with 3 events in that very short period. Mischa had prior comitements so i switched back to mainsheet, with PG from italy Ed from Aus coming in on trim and bow. We never really got going, so many changes to the crew all at once took its toll and we finished in 8th place.
After a couple of days back home and a brilliant time at the Richmond - Blair wedding it was staright back to building the 40 again in Nice france. This became one of the most frustrating events ive sailed in the extreme 40's, very light winds in the afternoon led to early starts in the morning to get 3-4 races in, in the drainage winds. Maybe an hour back at the hotel, before lunch and then back out for some very light shifty races over the coirse of a long afternoon waiting for the occasional puff of wind! we had moments of brilliance in the light stuff, but seemed of the pace in the morning races and altough close to the middle of the front runners we ended up in 8th again.
Next up Almeria.....

Cowes Extreme 40

2010-08-10T11:12:00.003+01:00

36 races, 200 guests given there first sail on an extreme 40, and first race wins for team GAC Pindar over 6 days of intense, high wind racing!
As each day came around the crews all groaned as we all knew a west to sw gradient wind meant again there would be 20knts on the race course come start time! It became a battle of atrition for us, a 10 am long distance race followed by 2 hours of corporate sailing, before the 3pm standard short course extreme 40 racing in front of the grandstand. The wind certainly led to a great spectacle and our brilliant GAC Pindar supporters having loved there morning sail all showed us huge vocal support in the afternoon, Thanks!
We benfitted since Sete by having our first 4 days training , which really helped us get a hold of our setup and crew routines, however our preperatins were dealt a huge blow when Ollie suffered a horrible freak accident when he was knocked off the boat suffering a bad injury to his knee which prevented him from competing. Adam Pigott came in and did a great job alongside myself and Nick, and Hugh Styles who also had joined us on mainsheet since sete.
It was great to be very much in the mix, winning races, our improvement since sete was obvious. We now hope we can compete in the last couple of events of the season, hopefully with a new main and jib (Jerries sail loft having done sterling work keeping our old sails from falling apart the whole week!)and we can start aiming for top 5 and even with some training podiuming before the end of the season.

4th Round the isle of Wight, 3rd Extreme 40......

2010-06-28T14:46:00.003+01:00

Sailing As team Metherell, we lined up with 1754 other boats to race around the Isle of Wight. Light winds early in the day (Our start gun fired at 05.10!), meant a relatively slow time around the island, but the racing was no less exciting, between the 4 extreme 40's. We finished in 4.34mins some 6 minutes behind race winner The wave and another minutes ahead of Ecover, Oman Masirah was a close second.
It was a great race Ecover lead to the needles after a flying start, We then took the lead at St Catherines point after choosing to sail offshore, but only by a small margin over the wave and masirah who went inshore. The Wave took the lead as we beated towards Bembridge, and held an important lead around Bembridge buoy as after here the tactical options ran out as it was a close reach down the solent to the finish.
Everyone on board the GAC Pindar boat were delighted with our race, it was a great day and really fun to sail the 40's on a long course to truly show there speed, Only Francis Joyon's Huge Tri, IDEC could pip he extreme 40's around the course.

Team GAC Pindar compete in first Extreme Sailing Series Event

2010-06-08T21:45:00.003+01:00

(photo:mark lloyd)

Myself, Skipper Nick Moloney, 40 veteran Fraser Brown and new boy to the class Ollie Smith met up in Sete France ahead of thefirst extreme 40 event of the year. We got onto the water two days before racing commenced and quickly tried to gell as a team whilst also trying to maintain our energy levels ahead of a potentially windy event.
The event was great, hugely competitive, 8 great teams fighting for each place. We finished at the back of the pack, but were on a huge learning curve throughout and were very happy with our progress. The Mistral wind fortunately held off untill the final race of the final day (which was quickly abandoned!), The estimated 16500 spectators got to watch a great spectacle in perfect, if shifty 15 knt winds.
We are looking forward to Racing around the island of wight with hundreds of other yachts, with a 5am start time , if all goes well we could be back ashore by 8am! Hopefully we should get a few days training then, before the second round of the extreme series in Cowes.......

New Year, New Campaign

2010-05-18T11:05:00.003+01:00

Since the end of the Extreme Asia series, I have been continuing to help coach various Youth squads in the Uk, Whilst looking for a new campaign for the 2010 season. 3 Very good corporate sailing trips, in Bahrain has led to a new Extreme 40 Sailing campaign! We will be launching Our new Team, and Team Name very shortly so watch this space!
The 2010 season looks set to be the best and hardest yet, The first event is just two weeks away in Sete france. With the announcement of our Title Sponsor and team name coming so late, we wont be getting on the water untill just before the start of racing, so will be on a fast learning curve, But all four members of the team are seasoned Pro's so hopefully this wont be a problem!

Leg 3 of the Extreme Asia Series

2010-02-11T17:41:00.002Z

The final Leg of the Extreme Sailing Asia series was held in Muscat, capital city of the Sultanate of Oman. As always with these events we did not get much of a chance to explore the country, which was a shame as it was a real change in culture with very different dessert / mountainous coastline. Definitely be worth a proper visit.
The racing though was very standard for the extreme 40 fleet, racing in the enclosed mouth of the channel into the Wave Muscat marina in front of a grandstand on the harbour wall.
Day 1 went very badly for us, it was very light never more than 5 knots. With the wind direction across the channel the race committee opted for reaching starts, This meant no real tactical options other than hitting the line at top speed. We were unfortunately still very slow with our 3 year old sails. Nick had found all year with Bundy and Barney in the I shares cup and then me and Will in Asia, as soon as it was not hull flying conditions we really struggled for pace, we ended the day a few points adrift in 6th.
Day 2 Saw maybe 6knts of wind but with the big change that the race committee managed to fit a upwind first leg to the course which instantly gave us tactical options. Although still slow we chose our 1st beat strategy well and had the best day of the fleet, moving up to 4th overall and closing the points deficit on the leaders.
Day 3 saw a first for us, Match Racing! This was great fun, and being just ten or so days before the Americas Cup was an interesting experiment to see how successful match racing in multihulls could be…… It worked very well, we had some great racing in the round robin, finishing 4th overall and qualifying for the 3rd/4th playoff against the current event leaders redbull. We both had a lively prestart which saw a even start with us both having split onto opposite tacks, redbull just had the advantage crossing by half a boat length on the first cross. They held a 1 boat length lead for 2 laps with us snapping at there heels at each mark rounding, which eventually put enough pressure on them to foul up there kite furl while the boys on Bt did a perfect job again, this meant we were far quicker in opening our spinnaker on the final leg, I gybe setted and our final gybe took us across the finish some 2 lengths clear! We were very pleased to take 3rd. The final saw some great pre start action between Rumbo Almeria and Oman Red, Ian Walker, Shirley Robertson, Stevie Mitchell And Nick Hutton are all very experienced match racers and it showed, they won the prestart and never gave the faster Red an passing opportunity.
Day 4 saw a massive change in the weather, wit 18 to 22 knots on the race course, this was probably the most disappointing day for us we never capitalised on the big wind and fell some 8 points back on the leaders. This was mostly down to our starting strategy and some bad tacking in the waves which I in particular hadn’t sailed in since the 08 season. Untill now the Red Bull guys had looked like thre was no way they would get knocked off top spot until they capsized at the leeward mark. The boat was swiftly recovered and all the sailors were in good shape, with the exeption of a nasty cut to double gold medallist Roman Hagara’s hand which needed 16 stitches and ruled him out of the final days sailing (coach Andrew Macpherrson tacking the stick).
The final day again saw a good 18 knots which unfortunatel quickly died down to 1-2 knots which limited the number of races held. We set our eyes on a podium finish in Oman which would give us 3rd overall in the series two, and put a great finals day racing together upto the final race. We reduced china teams 11 point lead to just 3 going into the final double points race, meaning we needed to beat them with one boat in between us. The race started well for us with a good start on port in a controlling position over china. We tacked in to the windward mark, with Oman Red just tacking infront of us, we almost sailed around them but they just managed to build speed and open there kite ahead of us and won the race (and with it piped the wave into first!), by not quite getting infront of Red, china was able to close the gap and get inside of us, so that when we gybed they instantly gybed on our wind and overtook us, with just one lap to go we new we had to not only overytake china but also red so we split at the leeward mark gambling on a big gain which unfortunately did not come, and allowed the wave to overtake.
We therefore finished in 4th overall, with some great race wins, and especially pleasing 2nd overall and 1st overall in the round the island race in Hong Kong. We were very happy to be pushing the European champs so hard considering the boat had not been close during the summer.
Bt has stopped its sponsorship at the end of this event, but we are quite hopefull we will be racing the summer season under a different sponsors colours….. watch this space!

Leg 2 of the extreme asia series - Singapore

2009-12-18T11:49:00.002Z

The second event in Singapore Saw some of the pace problems Bt had suffered in the i shares cup this year resurface, in the predominantly hulls down conditions we struggled to compete at the front.
The weather was generally very hot and humid, with only to drenchings during racing (unfortunately the real rain arrived perfectly for the two day pack up!). Sailing again right next to the city, we rigged the boats next to the pit lanes of the F1 grand prix, Im looking forward to next years GP to see if the 10m Skid mark is still on the track which Nick Hutton and i laid down, in the renta van! (just under the first bridge after the start!)
We tied for the lead after day 1 but as the 5 day competition progressed so the wind dropped, and our pace and placings with it. Our pace was certainly not the only problem we also had a number of races in the very light and shifty conditions where we made calls / plans where the complete opposite was proved to be the correct strategy.... Sometimes it just isnt your lucky day!
The event as in Hong Kong finished on a high for Bt, winning the double points race, although this time it was not enough to get us onto the podium.

Round the island Champions and 2nd overall in Exteme sailing series Asia

2009-11-30T08:48:00.001Z

It was brilliant to get back on the helm of a multihull again, and in my opinion nothing beats an extreme 40! I teamed up with skipper Nick Maloney again (jib/kite trim) on bt, this time sailing with Olympian Will Howden on mainsheet and Andy Doer on Bow. The guys did a great job of instantly gelling as a team and we were very pleased to take a small points lead after day two of racing ahead of European I shares cup champions Oman Masirah skippered by Pete Cumming.

Day 3 was perhaps the highlight, along with 300 boats, ranging from lasers to 50ft race boats, we raced around the island of Hong Kong. The extreme 40’s set off last, but within twenty minutes of starting we had already caught up the two hour headstart of the slower boats. Gybing our way through gaps in the fleet between the island and mainland hong kong. We held third spot behind the two Oman boats for the first 40 minutes before the first transition zone between the gradient northerly brease and the more southerly sea brease, we decided to stick close to the headland while the fleet headed offshore looking for stronger wind, our tactics paid off slightly and we led for a short while, along with team china and masirah. At the next “transition stage” it was masirah who best transitioned from the downwind brease to the new upwind wind direction, quickly sailing away as they moved into stronger winds. We began a great fight, constantly changing places with team china as we raced towards the western channel close o the finsh. As we approached the final leg the wind was really shutting down. We headed inshore on the northern side looking for wind with china slightly ahead, we both passed masirah who had to settle for third. We trailed team china right upto the final 400metres when we best judged the final wind transition, furling our kite and maintaing speed to pass team china, and win the final sprint to the line!

The final two days were back to short fleet racing. Masirah sailed excellently, to retake the lead from us. We struggled on the start line, and they took advantage starting well and slowing us down if they got the opurtunity. We rallied to win the final “double points” race, finishing comfortably ahead of third. We are now revved up to learn from our mistakes and go one better next week in Singapore!

Extreme Sailing series Asia

2009-11-12T13:25:00.002Z

After calling time on my 49er campaign, i am really pleased to have been asked to get back aboard the bt extreme 40 for the events in Hong Kong and Singapore.
With the Tornado definately removed from the 2012 Olympics, and a disapointing finish at the 49er worlds despite very encouraging results in the lighter airs events, i decided to resign from Olympic campaigning. I had a great ten months learning to sail the 9er, but would need at least another ten to get our boathandling to a level to compete in the olympic fleet. With Olympic selection process already begun and UK sailors already dominating the International fleet it seemed the right time to move on.
Racing in the extreme 40's is a great substitute for Olympic racing so im looking forward to joining up with the guys on tuesday......

Expert Garda

2009-05-14T17:22:00.001+01:00

We flew into Milan, before picking the boats up and making the short drive to lake garda. We arrived to perfect "Garda" conditions, 18 to 20knts each day. This was exactly what we had hoped for a good oppurtunity to work on our windy boathandling, and rig set up. Having not sailed in more than 14knts for the last couple of months we were pleased with how far we had improved. Our tacking and gybing, while not quite as good as the leaders was easily good enough to get us around the race track in good enough shape. Winning the last race of qualifying secured gold fleet for us which with improving our boathandling, and speed was our goals for the week. Garda is potentially a very easy place to sail, depending on your race course, a good start sailing fast into the cliffs should see you in the top 3 at every mark, however the simplicity of garda also makes it extremely hard to sail! if you dont start well and hold a fast lane into the cliffs you will be behind with limited oppurtunities to catch up, this puts starting practice and windy boatspeed very much at the front of our training thoughts over the next few months as we prepare for the Worlds back out in Garda!

ISAF Sailing World Cup : Hyeres

2009-04-27T12:45:00.002+01:00

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

2009-04-14T15:27:00.000+01:00

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!

2009 update

2009-03-11T10:10:00.004Z

The year so far has been dominated by long hours in the 49er with Simon, and the rest of the Skandia Team GBR 49er squad in the UK and recently now in Palma. We have moved our training base out to palma to allow longer training sessions in the warmer climate of the med, Palma is a cheap and easy venue to fly in and out of and the Princess Sofia regatta kick starts the 2009 European circuit in April. With 8 Top professional 49er teams competing for the 1 spot in team GB for the London Olympics, racing well enough to finish in the top 20 by July at the Worlds is my main goal for the year. Achieving top 20 having changed class from the Tornado, last year would be a great result, With the present economic climate we all know that the number of boats funded will need to be slashed post the worlds. So the pressure really is on for ourselves and the other teams to improve as fast as possible.
The main regattas we will be competing at ahead of the worlds are:-

April 5th - 11th, Princess Sofia Regatta, Spain
April 19th - 24th, Hyeres Regatta, France
May 5th - 9th, Expert Garda Regatta, Italy
May 16th - 17th, NR Weymouth, UK
May 27th - 31st, Holland Regatta, NED
June 22nd - 30th, Kiel Week, Germany
July 12th - 19th, 49er World Championships, Italy

We shall of course be training as hard as possible around these competition dates, and hopefully after a good result at the worlds, there will be a bit of rest period in the 49er to refresh, refocus and prepare for the next step in our Olympic campaign. This "down period" will hopefully allow the oppurtunity to race on different boats and classes as i did last summer in the i shares cup on the bt exteme 40.

Marlow Support for 49er campaign

2009-01-23T12:30:00.002Z

Myself and Simon are delighted that Marlow ropes (www.marlowropes.com), have agreed to support our olympic 49er campaign. I was lucky enough to have them as a sponsor in my last two campaigns on the Highly optimised Tornado where low windage, zero stretch and minimum weight were essential and then on the massively loaded BT extreme 40 catamaran, where pure strength and durability were key.
Next up on the campaign front is a squad fitness week in and around southampton, before heading down to weymouth in early feb for a weeks olympic training camp.

Palamos Xmas race

2008-12-26T11:53:00.003Z

We set off for Spain on saturday the 13th, two RYA Transit vans loaded with 5 49ers and one rib. The ferry arrived at Caen in france at 6am and we started the 12 hour drive down to Palamos. The two Vans quickly chose seperate routes and the racing started earlier than expected! Unfortunately for us the quickest route calculated by our computer took us down the N75, straight though the central Masiv region, the first snowflakes started to fall 6 or seven hours into the drive, but as we steadily climbed the snow soon became heavy, half an hour later we were two cars behind a snow plow, the only thing keeping the highway open! Unfortunately an average speed of about 20mph gave an easy victory to van Van2! in fact we were some 6 hours later than the other guys, having experienced a road closure with 150mile diversion, 2 very stressful hills, wheel spinning from side to side on sheet ice, and the experience of having to buy then fit snow chains! Van 2 had a journey, we had an adventure!
We had an easy first day in palmos, rigging up and washing the boat, but got straight into training the next day. The med had some large cross wind swells rolling in, very new conditions for us in the 49er. We had 2 excellent days training in the new conditions, and were very encouraged by two 3rds in the small practice races Harvey laid on.
Day one of racing dawned with 12 - 15knt winds, and relatively flat waters. race 1 started well for us, starting on port at the committe boat end we rounded the top mark 4th and staid there from start to finish, a good way to begin our 49er campaigning. Trying to keep racing simple we attempted race 2 in the same manner, but were caught on port tack by a late stb starter and were forced to tack leaving us down the pan in twentieth......... This was to be the pattern for our week, the races we started in ok or good shape we would finish well in the top 5, the races where we had disastrous starts or a major boathandling error (we suffered capsizes in about 4-5 seperate races!) we had deep finishes. Which led to our Final finish position off 11th place, two points out of the medal race. A very encouraging start after 3 months of sailing, with about 3 more months before Palma regatta, the first important event for ourselves.
A quick pack up allowed us to get back on the road for home, we had changed our ferry to the next morning, in an attempt to get us home with more time to spare ahead of xmas. Having left ourselves about 14 hours to make the 12 hour journey (18hours on the way out!) we drove through the night having taken rather more care in our route selection we made the ferry with an hour and a half to spare and more importantly 5 minutes ahead of van 2!

Winter Training, Palamos Xmas Regatta

2008-12-09T20:52:00.002Z

The last two weeks have seen some excellent training for us. We have been sailing out of warsash sc, who have kindly hosted the squad. Despite the winter temperatures, we have had good length days on the water, concentrating mostly on our boathandling. The main focus has been on tacks and gybes, while our downwind gybing still needs work we are delighted with our tacking and general upwind sailing, we are really mixing it with the rest of the squad now.
The new rig development is progressing well, the squad are working hard together to find the best settings across the wind ranges. Hopefully working together will give us a big jump over the rest of the world.
Next up is a few days of boat work before we load up two vans, a rib and a trailer with 5 49ers. We catch a ferry from portsmouth on saturday then drive down to Palamos in northern spain for the palamos Xmas regatta. This will be an excellent opportunity to test ourselves against europes top sailors, we know we are training against top sailors in the uk, so it will be nice to see where we fit into the pecking order in proper regatta racing......... watch this space to follow our progress.
Walshy

New Olympic cycle - New Look 49er Rig

2008-11-23T17:05:00.001Z

The first ten 49er rigs were flown into the Uk and used for the first time by ourselves and the rest of the GBR squad last week in Hayling. The new rigs are Neil Pryde/Ian MacDiarmid "square head" sail design and Southern Spars 3 piece carbon mast, with new style jib. The rigs are some 6 to 7 kg lighter and around a meter taller.
On the water its still to early to know what the increase in sail plan and lighter mast will do to the performance of the boat and the optimum crew size and weight. The few days testing certainly showed the new rigs to be marginally faster, than the old, every so often the new rig would surge ahead when a crew found the "sweet spot". The challenge for the squad is to find the best set ups for the rigs across the wind range before the rest of the world, and for us to make sure our boat handling is up to scratch to take advantage of any speed edges!
We shall continue our new rigs development this coming week training back down in weymouth..........

49er Inland National Champioships

2008-11-03T16:57:00.002Z

Grafham Water hosted the 2008 Ovington boats Inland Championships. A large turn out in the 49er class was all the more impressive with the forecasted freezing temperatures. Excellent race officering saw 7 races laid on over the weekend. Myself and Simon had now spent 30 days training in the 9er and it was nice to see a big improvement from our performances at Sail for gold the month before.
We finished in 4th place overall, with a 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, 7th & 9th places on our score card, we won the second day of racing with the 1st,2nd & 6th leaving us very encouraged we are slowly moving forwards. Our boathandling is still our major limiting factor, but we are finding ourselves "racing" far higher up the wind range where as just two weeks ago we would have been just trying to get around the course!
Starting is certainly an area for big improvement, with only 2 good starts out of the 7 races we were making life harder than it needed to be, but it was certainly pleasing to sail through the fleet both up and downwind. Hopefully when we get our boathandling and starting upto scratch we should be mixing it at the front.

London 2012 Campaign: Team Walsh-Marks!

2008-09-25T15:03:00.001+01:00

Myself and Simon Marks are delighted to have begun our Olympic Sailing campaign in the 49er class. While the Olympic Skiff is completely new to me, Simon brings a wealth of experience in the boat to the campaign. The 49er is a truly exciting boat to sail and watch alike, and will provide a huge challenge to master over the next 3 years, if the team are to achieve their ambition of winning Olympic selection.

Podium finish for Team BT

2008-09-25T14:02:00.001+01:00

With the Final of the 2008 I shares cup event concluding on Sunday, the BT team are delighted to have finished 3rd overall. Unfortunately for me i had to sit out the final event as the Amsterdam leg clashed with Skandia Sail for gold regatta. Darren Bundock came in, and fresh from his silver medal performance in China, sailed a great series with the guys to maintain our overall podium position, in the hugely tricky sailing conditions in the middle of the city!

Skandia Sail for Gold

2008-09-25T14:01:00.000+01:00

The countdown to the London 2012 Games has very much begun, Skandia sail for gold is set to be one of the biggest events in the Olympic calendar. This event was my first time racing a 49er, infact the day before the event started was the first time i sailed alongside another 49er, the event was therefore very much a big "learning" event for me and Simon. The racing was great fun, short courses with 30+ boats on the start line saw spectacular crash and burn close tactical racing. The highlight for ourselves was our steady improvement throughout the week as i learnt to sail the boat (having spent just 10 days in a 49er), and we learnt to race together, culminating in a great 4th place in the final race.
Plenty of work to be done, but a very encouraging start!