on the road again!

After Finishing up at Garda, I had a long drive to the Weymouth in the UK with the coach boat and two 49ers. I have done plenty of miles in europe over the last few years but I think it is fair to say that this trip was my most entertaining.

After Dropping Nathan and Lauren at Milan airport it was up through switzerland to France and then England.

about ten km's from the Swiss French border the Swiss Police decided to pull me over. They escorted me into a local police compound and gave the Audi and trailer a thorough work over!

Apparently putting a 49er on the roof and having one on top of the coach boat was not really to their liking... after a little negotiating and a few nervous moments it cost 300 Swiss Francs and three hours and reluctantly they let me move on!

Then it was up to Calais for the ferry crossing. As I stopped at the ferry terminal to wait in line for the ferry, I parked and had a good look over the trailer and boats only to find two Pakistani stowaway refugees tucked under the gear in the coach boat! They probably had no idea why I was so furious as they were lying on some of our sails, I was going ballistic! They did get the picture eventually and scurried off into the darkness, then the immigration police turned up, apparently they got caught a little later. I am told that it is a fairly normal thing to occur in Calais. They must have got in at the service station just down the road which I stopped to fill up for fuel... needless to say that it was an action packed 24hours!

after dropping the boats at Weymouth I am heading up to Royal Lytham and St Annes golf Club for the Womens British Open. I am Caddying for Nikki Garrett. Lets hope the English weather can be a little kind!

29er worlds

After the 49er worlds finished, I stayed around in Garda to coach the Ausralain 29er team.

We had a very solid team with 5 boats, all having a good chance to finish high up in the regatta.

The weather was typical Garda 25-30 degrees and solid 'ora' breezes every day.

Racing was spectacular with 180 boats, 4 fleets and a very busy northern end of the lake!

The team did very well. We managed to finish 1,2,3,6,14. It was great to see the podium filled with Three Aussie boats!

49er worlds

Well its been a busy couple of weeks.

We finished up in the 49er worlds at 19th place. I guess you could say there are some mixed feelings, you always look at areas which you could have done a little better. But generally I think we are both satisfied that we had a good regatta and got ourselves to a reasonably high level in a short campaign period. Thanks to everyone for the support throughout northern Summer.

As far as the regatta results went, Nathan and Gooby sailed a fantastic regatta, clearly the most consistent boat and thoroughly deserved their win. We have had a great time hanging out with them and all the Aussies during the worlds. Thanks must also go to Emmett, his coaching is invaluable and he keeps us on the straight and narrow in many other ways!

Not sure where too now, will have to spend some time considering options, but Bahamas is fast approaching (regatta Jan 2010) so will have to make a decision on that asap.

A good day

Well today we finally got down to some racing. Garda has been a fantastic place to be for the last few weeks, but after all we are here to race a worlds and it was great to be out there competing.

We had a pretty typical Garda 'Ora' breeze built from about 12knots for our first race to 16knots later in the day.

Fortunately for us we had a pretty good day, we managed a 1,2,7 in three races to finish the day in 5th overall. Very early days but its nice to know all the work we have been doing is paying off at least a little. The boat is going fast and we hopefully will only get better as the regatta goes on.

But as they say tomorrow is a new day and we have to take it as it comes!

Enough cliches, you can see the results at www.49erworlds.org, or follow links from www.sailing.org.

Two more days of Qualifying then we get split into finals fleets, 25 boats make the cut....

Garda

Training with Nathan and Gooby... always a race back to the dock!

Well this must be one of the best places to go sailing this time of year. It warm, windy, fresh water and sensational food!!

fortunately we have been reasonably diligent with the weight loss and we can enjoy a few of the local dishes. Sam and I seem to be comfortably under 160kg now so should be in the right range for a moderate to windy regatta here and if the first week is anything to go by we should expect a fair bit of breeze. Today has been the only day so far with less than 12knots during race time...

Anyway we don't start for another 10 days or so, so back to the training track for more practice!

some links :

http://www.fragliavelariva.it/

http://www.49er.org/

Kiel

Don't have any photos of Kiel, not too much to see there!

We had a pretty tough regatta, not too much breeze, sailed all races below 10 knots and some below 6 knots. But no excuses!

We did not manage to qualify for Gold fleet, missing bey a few points after wasting plenty out on the race course in the first five races...

Then we sailed 3 races in Silver fleet which we had some consistent results and ended up on top of the point score for that fleet and therefore 26th in the regatta....

The Long and the short of it was that we had a little race practice and ironed out a few more things before the worlds, and now we are very much appreciating Italy and all Garda has to offer!

Will definitely have some photos of this place soon!!

some numbers...

4 days,

19 hours total in the saddle,

345km distance travelled,

9011m elevation gained,

17318 calories burned,

0 flat tyres,

no crashes,

two worn out humans!