12/05/2008, Home
On the 10/11th of May we had a National Ranking event at Hayling Island. It is the last Spring Series event of the year and a chance to get some good racing done back in the UK. A couple of days before the event we were down at Hayling training whilst we had some glamour weather in the UK for a change. The training went well especially the windy day which really brought out how much we are improving our windy boat handling.
Racing was supposed to start at 12 on Saturday but there was no chance of that happening when there was no wind, but at least it was hot! Which was perfect timing for Tasha and Dominie who came from Joules Clothing (our secondary sponsor) to have a see what we really get up to at events? We finally launched but a bit later than expected. After 15 minutes of trying to sail out of the harbor we had managed to move about 10 metres out to the bay. So we sailed back to the shore and walked the boats all the way along the beach and round the corner and we still could not make ground over the tide. So eventually we got a tow off a rescue boat in time for the first start.
The breeze had filled in to about 5/7knots for the first race out in Hayling Bay. We had a good start but wanted to go right, so we tacked out and unfortunately touched another boats tiller in doing so. Once we had completed our 360 things were not looking good, but we chipped away around the race course to bring in a 5th. The next two races went reasonable with two 4ths but nothing special.
Sunday was another glamour day on the water, with 7-10knots of breeze and lots of sunshine. In the first race the breeze went right making quite a large gap in the fleet. We rounded the windward mark in 7th place but had good boatspeed to finish 2nd. In the following race we thought we had a glamour start off the pin end sailed all the way to the port layline, tacked and crossed the fleet, then rounded the windward mark 1st only to find out we were over the line at the start. It turned out that we were about 3 feet over the line which was frustrating. The final race went well with another good glamour start but this time we were not over the line. After some good racing we finished 3rd in that race which was were we finished overall.
On Wednesday we leave for Medemblik in Holland for the Delta Lloyd Regatta.
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07/05/2008, Stokes Bay
Last Friday, Saturday and Sunday we were training down at Stokes Bay with a couple of training partners. Chris Rashley and Matt Gotrel aka Captain crash and Shrek, because Rash always crashes and Matt's tall, ugly and always moans about generally everything. As well as Chris and Matt on the Saturday/Sunday Richard Mason and Tom Peel joined in.
On Friday after spending the morning sorting out all our kit that seems to have built up and has now filled the box trailer to the brim, we went for a 3 hour sail out in the Solent. We had between 8-12knots of wind and a bit of sunshine which was glamour 49er sailing weather. Once we launched we concentrated on boathandling with a bit of follow my leader, loads of tacking and gybing, some short course 5 lappers and a bit of starting/triggering to finish off.
The wind was a bit fresher on Saturday with about 14-16knots gusting 18 another awesome day out in the Solent. In the first session of 2 that we did, we were looking at our boathandling again. To warm up we did a bit of follow my leader and then the 50 gybe challenge! Not the crews favorite exercise but we do more gybes in one run than we do in a week long regatta, so an awesome way to practice gybing but you need a big bit of water in a 49er to complete it. In the afternoon we did some short course racing and then looked at our starting again.
The wind had moderated on Sunday and at points in the morning there was no wind, but the wind did fill in to 5 knots and gradually built up to 8. More boathandling with follow my leader around some close buoys next to the club and the we did a short races around the buoys that you are not supposed to go inside because apparently in May people actually go swimming in the Solent! We had to move because the club was not happy with us using these marks so we moved further offshore. We then finished off with some triggering before we headed in and packed up.
Another 3 good days on the water and lots learnt. On Wednesday to Friday we are training down at Hayling Island with the rest of the 49er Olympic Development and Performance squad before the RYA Spring Series at Hayling on the Saturday and Sunday.
Here is another photo from Hyeres
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30/04/2008, Home
Hyeres 2008 Update
Last week Alain and I were in the South of France at a place called Hyeres, this was for another ISAF Grade 1 Olympic Class's Regatta. When we arrived the weather was worse than the England! It was raining non-stop, cold and windy. But after a couple of days it was shirts off weather and a glamour 8-11knots of breeze for our last day of training before the regatta started. Again we split into 2 fleets for the Qualification series, for the first day we were yellow fleet and first start.
The forecast for the first day was breeze on and it was supposed to increase all day which is exactly was it did. Our first race was about 18-20knots and the chop had really kicked up. It was an awesome race with plenty of capsizes, pitchpoles and breakage but we did not suffer from any. Since the Europeans we have been working really hard on our boathandling to ensure that we do not capsize when it gets breezy and it paid off. For the second race the breeze had picked up again to 22 knots and the chop had massively picked up. There was even more thrills and spills in the second race with lots of top teams taking a swim. We had another consistent race with no capsizes but a very very close pitchpole. After rounding the last windward mark about 100m behind the French and Portuguese, we caught up with both teams half way down the run but then saw a massive wave set in front. Alain started to flap the kite to lift the bow and slow the boat down but this was not enough, the bow went straight in to the back of the wave. Usually this ends with the boat doing a front flip, but we managed to save it and rounded back up into the wind with the kite still up. Alain went in and dropped the kite, we tacked round and re-hoisted. We did not loose any places on that run and we were sent in with racing finished for our fleet. On the way in we were two sail 'Death Zone' reaching, this is basically sailing downwind with boat of us on the wire and in the footloops. Its called the death zone because it can very quickly turn bad, as it did with us. The boat was staring down the back of a huge wave which would have resulted in a certain pitchpole. So I decided to round back up into the wind which resulted in us capsizing. When we got the boat upright we had bent the boom badly so had to drop the main on the water and sail in under jib alone. The second fleet only completed one race and there was only 7 finishers from there race compared to 14 in both of ours!
Day 2 was another glamour days sailing in Hyeres. 3 races were held in 18-22knots and blue skies, we had a consistent day with nothing amazing results wise. We had mistake in the first and last race that cost us a lot of places up the first beat and then we recovered but not enough for gold fleet. For the 3rd regatta we were only a few places away from gold fleet. In a normal 49er event we would have been in gold fleet because we qualified in the top 25 which is normally gold fleet but at Hyeres it was top 21. Although we were annoyed at the time, our goal from then on was to win Silver fleet something we had not achieved.
Day 3 was supposed to be the last day of racing for the Qualifying Series but it was blown off because it was blowing a gale literally!
Day 4 was the first day of silver fleet. Our goal for silver fleet was to win either the pin or committee boat at the start. Something we use to do all the time in 29er's but since moving to the 49er we have stuck with the easier option of starting in the middle. On the first day we had to glamour starts either the first or second boat down from the committee boat. The first start was the worst, we ended up going backwards at the start and we were well and truly last off the startline. We just picked off one boat at a time during the race and finished 3rd, not bad after being 21st off the startline! We had moved up to 2nd in silver fleet and we were only a few points away from 1st.
The last day of racing was a lot lighter than any of the other races we had during the regatta and very similar to the conditions we had last year. The breeze was shifting around quite a lot and there was massive gains to be made around the course but bigger loses. We had boatspeed to burn in both races and finished with two 2nds which put us into 1st place with 2nd place 8 points behind us.
We felt that we had an awesome regatta and there was a lot of information for us to take away and work in time for the Holland regatta in 3 weeks. This week we are having a couple of days off before we are back training at Stokes bay and then Hayling Island the following week.
Photo copyright Steve Lovegrove
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Keep up the good work.
03/04/2008, Home
So now we are back home after 4 weeks in Palma of training and regatta's. Last week we were competing in the 2008 49er Europeans in Arenal, Palma de Mallorca. It was an awesome event but defiantly one of the windiest 49er regattas we have competed in.
The first day was abandoned due to too much wind so the only people on the water were the windsurfers and kitesurfer's which was amazing to watch. I defiantly need to learn how to kitesurf. The following day was also windy and the breeze was blowing straight in to the bay kicking up a massive swell. The first race started in 22 knots and was on the edge of 49er racing. We had a good start and we were 6th going down the last run only to make a massive mistake. I kicked the tiller as I crossed the boat in the last gybe to the finish. The end result was we capsized, I fell out the boat and we finished 16th. We were still confident in our boathandling and had a good start to the next race. But disaster struck in the first run, as we were going downwind on starboard coming into the leeward gates there was an Italian 49er coming upwind on port. We tried to get out the way (even though they are in the wrong) but we did not get out of the way. There wing went into my arm, so I went flying round the back of the boat broke the trapeze elastic and hurt my arm. Our coach took me in to see the medics whilst Alain had to sail the boat in by himself. We took the main down but it was still impressive he managed to get in and get the foils out! The Medics wanted me to go to hospital to get an x-ray but they did not think it was broken. I could not sail for the rest of the day and we missed 4 out of the 5 races that day but we got redress of average points. But it was windy and we were really frustrated on missing the races as all you had to do was keep the boat upright and you came in the top 10!
The next day of racing was lighter we had an average day posting a 13,19,8 which unfortunately was not enough for gold fleet. It was really frustrating because we knew that we could be in gold fleet but in such a tight fleet with 16 and 19 its always going to be hard to make gold fleet. But we were confident in Silver fleet and our goal was to come top 3.
First day of silver fleet racing went really on one side and bad on the other. We had a brilliant first race leading from start to finish with loads of boatspeed and great boathandling. Again disaster struck when we bore away on the last lap of the first race, our wire forestay almost broke. There was a big bang and Alain looked up to see a frayed forestay but we thought we do not care as long as we do not capsize or pitchpole it should be fine. We made it down the run and won the race convincingly but there was no way it would survive another race. So we had to take the main down and head in missing the 2nd race of the day. We were gutted about missing another race when we were going really fast and had great boat handling.
The next 2 days we sailed really consistently and it was the first time in silver fleet that we have sailed such a consistent series. We moved up from Qualifying 4th in Silver fleet to 2nd in Silver fleet. This is our best position at a Worlds or Europeans and we were really happy with how we sailed but next time our goal is to complete all the races!
This weekend we are doing an I14 event at hayling island to get some experience in another high performance twin trapeze boat and hopefully it will be wicked fun.
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22/03/2008, Palma
We have just finished the Princess Sofia Regatta in Palma and now we are getting ready for the 49er Europeans which start on Monday.
The Regatta was a training event for the 49er Europeans and we had process goals to hit during the week and we were concentrating on skills rather than on the overall result. But you always end up thinking about the result because its hard not to.
The first 2 days we had were typical Palma conditions, a nice 10-14 knot sea breeze and normal 'grade 1 chop'. We have used this term 'grade 1 chop' to describe the chop because you only get it at big ISAF Grade 1 events (and Palma which officially a grade 2 event). Its horrible and messy with no pattern or predictability and its caused by all hundreds of boats and race to get the next mark but the Coach's in the RIB's. The tactics for the first 2 days was simple, start well, hold your lane and smash the left hand side. If you were able to do this you rounded the windward mark top 10 every race. Unfortunately on the first start the Brazilians snapped our tiller at 15 seconds and consequently we were last off the start but made a good recovery. The next race went a lot better and we had a ok start held our lane and finished in the top 10.
Day 3 was completely different, we had a gradient breeze and the sea breeze fighting each other. This meant that is was massively shifty with no pattern and to top it off we had huge swell left over from the night before. The breeze varied from 4 to 18 knots and that was in 1 race! We had 2 good races and posted two 13ths which was consistent with lots of other boats having one good and bad race. Unfortunately we got it very wrong in the last race and I mean really wrong, which gave us our worst result of the regatta and put us out of gold fleet.
Day 4 and silver fleet racing begins, we had a good day with similar conditions to the first 2 days and posted a 3 and 6. Going into the last day of racing we were 1 point behind the 1st boat in silver fleet. We knew what we had to do and had a good first race but finished just behind the Canadians in first. We had to beat them by 2 places in the race to beat them overall but that did not happen. The wind went really shifty, we had a bad start and then took to big a risks to get back in front of the Canadians which was very frustrating.
Overall we did achieve our Process Goals for the regatta and finished 4th in silver fleet.
We spent today measuring the boat for the Europeans putting together our best mast which finally got here. A very long story but to cut it short it was supposed to be here 2 weeks ago but never turned up and after many phone calls to sort it out and failed attempts we finally got it out here just in time for the Europeans.
Tomorrow are going for a short sail in the morning to check the boat over and rig settings, then we will have the rest of the day off. Racing starts on Monday through to Saturday with a Medal race on Sunday.
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26/02/2008, Bandol, France
We had 6 day training camp in Palma de Mallorca last week with 4 other british boats. It was definatly warmer than the UK but not quite hot just yet. The first 2 days were spent on boathanlding with plenty of hours on the water and lots and lots of tacks, gybes etc. I think we did well over 100 tacks and gybes on one day, so it all improved and got us back in to our boathandling like australia.
Next there was a 5 day mini regatta, which we only completed 4 of because we had to come home and compete in an RYA National Ranker. Generally it was light winds but it was a good standard of fleet with 5 boats from the medal race at the worlds. We did quite well and managed have good starts and first beats but we were a bit to indesive on the 2nd beat especially when we were winning. We only relised this once we looked back on it so that it what we are going to work on in camp 2 next week.
At the moment Alain is working back at LDC aswell as fitting in his fitness programme and I am coaching the dutch 29er team in Bandol.
We both can not wait to get out to Palma and start training!
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11/02/2008, Home
Well we had a awesome ODS camp down in weymouth home of the 2012 olympic sailing venue. We had 4 days of sunshine and glamour sailing conditions. We also finally got our new boat on the water (thank you Great Bear) which was good to give it a test before it goes off to palma.
The camp went really well, we just wish we could have had longer days so we could get more time on the water! At the camp we mainly worked on starting and racing, especially with one track race courses such as palma can be. Our pre-start boathandling has improved masssively and it showed in how much better our starts had got.
On the last day we got our new boat on the water and it felt rapid. I am not sure exactly why but it just seems to keep going in the lulls and stay in the groove alot easier than our older boats. Unfortunatly we did not do any tuning and the main focus was short course racing but it still showed the pace of the new boat.
Now we can not wait to get to Palma and start training again in some warmer waters. Alain drives out this thursday whilst I get to fly.
Hopefully get some pics of the new boat up soon.
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30/01/2008, home
Well we had an interesting event last saturday called the Steve Nicholson Memorial Trophy. All the proceeds of the event go the Asthma UK and this year over ?'?3000 was raised. The event was at Pitsford in Northampton which is Dylan's home cluba and where he learnt to sail and race but it is on the small side for 49ers!
It was a windy start on Saturday, we went out before the race started to have a train and get back into sailing after a short break. Its suprising how rusty you get quickly... After a short sail which went well and we got back into it again. But disaster struck in the first race, after leading around the windward mark we put the kite up and the port cap spreader tip (the bit that holds the wire in the spreader) broke so basically it we had kept the kite up our mast would have done THIS. So we came in and fixed it but missed a lap of the race and came last. Then in the second race we won it by over half a leg to the other 2 49ers but this still was not enough to beat Sten in his Musto Skiff.
All in all a good days sailing but definatly only once a year! here is the write up Clicky
Dylan is off to Weymouth tomorrow to align the foils in the new boat, then we are doing the Tiger Trophy at Rutland on Saturday and Sunday.
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23/01/2008, home
Well here is a quick round up of our the worlds...
All our pre event training had gone very well. We had got all our settings for our new rig and it was going fast, as fast as 2007 World Champions most of the time. There had been 3 training regattas that we had done and we had come top 3 in all of them which was a great confidence boost for us. We had a couple of days of just before the event to recharge the batteries and make sure the boat was ready. The first day of racing was held in 14knots dropping off to 8 knots, it was quite choppy but we knew we were fast in these conditions. The first race did not go so well, a bolt on the kicker broke before the start so we came in and fixed it but missed the start by 2 minutes. We caught up to 20th out of 28 but it was not a great start but at least we had good speed. Then in race 2 we had a good start and we were coming 5th going up the last beat only to go to the wrong mark and finish 16th! We were both very annoyed as you can imagine but we will never be making that mistake again. In the last race we came in a solid 4th. The second day did not go to well, we had a small boat speed issue but if we had a good last day of qualifying we would be in Gold Fleet (our goal). The last day of qualifying did not go well, we broke a lot of things on the boat and ended up only just being able to complete one of the 3 races. This was very very frustrating but we learnt a lot from this, do not bring old kit of big events! We only just managed to qualify for Silver fleet but we were just going to sail the best we could and not worry about the result. The racing in silver fleet was very different to qualifying, the wind was shifting around a lot and there was no pattern to it. As a result the fleet was all over the place and no one was that consistent. We had the best speed in the fleet and we were the best starter of the fleet but in shifty conditions it did not seem to make a difference. We were sailing to conservatively so basically we did too many tacks and ended up losing anything we gained. Unfortunately we only realized this on the last day of racing which was our best. It was an odd event because in most events if you are the quickest in your fleet and the best at starting you normally finish in the top 5 every day at least. We ended up 45th overall which was not were we wanted to be, but we learnt more than would have done if we achieved our goal.
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22/01/2008, UK
We are now back in the UK putting what we have learnt from the worlds in Australia towards our training up tp palma regatta and our europeans.
Our new boat has arrived thanks to our new sponsor GREAT BEAR dylan has been putting her together with our Holt and marlow sponsorship then taking it to simon hiscocks workshop to alighn our foils.
we are going to palma early this year (second week in february) to train the other brits in our new boat dylan says she looks shiny so she must be fast !
there are a few regattas and training camps before we go - Steve Nicholson trophy and the Tiger trophy which our handicaped events where diffenrent class of boats race all at the same time
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