Welcome to the Blog of Chris Rashley and Matt Gotrel. Here you will be able to keep up to date with the team. Where we are and what we are doing.

We teamed up to start sailing full time at the end of January 2008, Chris having just come out of tornado sailing (due to the ISAF decision to drop it as an Olympic class) and Matt coming from 29ers and having just finishing exams, we had a lot of work to get ready for the Europeans in late March. We sailed 31 days together before traveling to Palma.

We arrived in Palma for a weeks training. after arriving we headed for the apartment. looking over the bay it was perfect sailing conditions, 12-14knots and 18-20 degrees. During this week we did a training regatta which really helped us understand what racing was all about. We then travelled home to do a National Ranker at Weymouth.

Now it was time to go back to Palma for the Europeans, we had 2 weeks of training and the Princess Sofea regatta to give us the best preparation for the Europeans.

Day 1 was cancelled due to high winds, this gave us a bit of a day off! Day 2 was more high winds and big waves, the perfect start to your first big event! we hadn't done much windy sailing so it was a big learning curve, we finally managed to make the pieces join together in the 3rd race of the day, we ended up with a 12,16,8. and there was a lot learned from the day. Day 3 was similar winds averaging 18knots but it was very wavy due to the big winds from the previous days. We had a good first race posting a 13, and then two average results 17,17.

That was the end of qualification and we were 29th, which left us 4th in the silver fleet. The silver fleet was excellent for us as it gave is the space to put the things we had practiced into our racing. we posted a 4th and a 15th on Day 4. Day 5 was slightly different with 15knots and flatter water, we were starting very well and sailing with confidence, we posted a 3,6,15. The last day was slightly lighter than the previous 10-12knots, we struggled in the lighter conditions but it highlighted to us that it was an area we need to work on.

We were very happy with our performance out in Palma and came out of it with some clear plans to improve. We then had 2 weeks at home to put some training in before heading out to Hyeres for the Olympic Classes Regatta