49er sailing team

After a week back home we then travelled to Lake Garda. With the worlds here later in the year 37 boats turned up and weren't dissappointed! we had perfect sailing conditions all week with winds from 14-22knots. The regatta kicked of with 2 days of qualifying, on the first day we posted and 6,8,4 which left us 10th overall. Day 2 came with the same wind and we had a 10,9,5 which left us 14th overall.

So as the fleets split into Gold and Silver, the top 19 boats would be in Gold fleet. All the Brits were there with Walsh/Marks taking the 19th spot after winning the last race.

Gold fleet racing commenced, and as Palma and Hyeres had shown the Sibello brothers were off! no-one was going to be able to catch them. The racing was very tight with places changing every leg. Going into the last day we were lying in 10th but very close on points. We didn't have the best last day and ended up 13th Overall. A result we are very happy with after Palma and Hyeres.

This regatta was a massive boost for us and we hope we can take our form to Holland Regatta with us at the end of the month.

Meanwhile we have a Spring Series Regatta at Hayling Island this weekend, which will be nice to sail back on home waters.

After the winters training out in Palma we had plenty of confidence heading into the regatta. The regatta bought some frustrating conditions very unlike Palma with light/shifty winds and alot of hanging around. We struggled with tactics in the shifty conditions and made a few too many mistakes. But we took some positives from the regatta, our winter training had definately improved our starts and our overall boat handling.

After Palma we headed to Hyeres. This turned out to be another very shifty regatta which saw alot of the fleet with very inconsistent results. We had some good points during the week and some definate races where we were outclassed. During the regatta, again we had excellent starts and we also had our first race win.

The two regattas havent gone our way, but we have learned alot about our sailing and have improved our skills enormously since the start of the winter.

We now have another regatta in Europe this time in Lake Garda, Italy. A notoriously windy/stable venue which will hopefully let us excel.

After the Spring Series event we flew straight out to Palma for a squad camp from the 17th to the 22nd. This week was completely focused on tuning, and we had specialist Grant Spanhake with us for the whole week which was excellent. The week went very well, we found some good settings for the lighter winds. Now we need to get some good settings for a bit more breeze.

After the camp we had a week back home, and we are now back in Palma for some pre-regatta training. The boat park is slowly filling up before the regatta starts on Sunday. Follow all the action at www.trofeoprincesasofia.org

On Saturday 14th March all the Olympic classes along with the 420's and a handful of other youth classes all decended on Weymouth. 14 49ers were there ready for racing which kicked off at 12. With 4 races scheduled it was going to be a long day on the water.

With the gusty, shifty westerly that greated us there were many places to be gained and more to be lost! we had a consistant day posting a 4th, 2nd, 4th, 4th. This left us 1 point behind Dylan and Alain in a very close top 5.

Day 2 arrived and after an hour postponement the fleet hit the water, with a steady south westerly that showed signs of a sea breeze, we sailed back from deep in the pack to finish 5th in the first race. Which turned out to be our discard. The final race saw us again sail back into the race to finish 3rd. At the end of the regatta we finished 4th on equal points with Dylan and Alain in 3rd.

We are now heading back out to Palma for 5 days training before the Princess Sofia Regatta. Hopefully we will bring the warm weather back

After our 2 weeks in Palma we unfortunately had to go home. Being back in Weymouth was surprisingly nice, getting back to what we are used to. We have just finished a squad camp that ran from Thursday to Sunday. With 6 boats on the water we had some good training. Off the water - we had one special morning of "exercise" which consisted of blowing ourselves up on rowing machines for 2 hours, and then attempting to go racing! The week was full of different conditions and on Sunday we were greated with 20-25 knots which resulted in some swimming! but only the once...

We have a Spring Series event in Weymouth this weekend and we are then back out to sunny Palma on tuesday..