I am delighted to be able to announce the launch of the British Keelboat Academy. This is an exciting new partnership between the RYA and UKSA, and is a merger between the two existing programmes which I have run for the past few years - the RYA Keelboat Progrmme and UKSA Yacht Racing Acedemy. Some areas will continue to run in a similar way to before - for example, ‘John Merricks II’ - but the new project should also allow us to offer a better training and racing opportunities for young sailors and also a great package to offer to potential sponsors. I am really excited to be involved with this venture.
Full details can be found on the website, including details of how to apply to attend the selections: www.britishkeelboatacademy.org
This weekend was spent finishing off packing up ‘John Merricks II’ for the winter. The mast is now out and rigging stripped off, a few final fittings removed from the boat and all equipment neatly stored in the storage container. We have a fairly extensive jobs list planned for the boat over the winter, including some larger ones such as re-painting the deck.
I spent today in Weymouth observing Harvey Hilary (RYA National Coach and part of UK Sport’s Elite Coach programme) working with the Olympic 49er sailors. It was really interesting to observe another coach in action, as this is not something you get to do very often. Harvey was also really helpful in discussing a number of the tools he uses for goal setting, sailor profiling and performance tracking, and these are all things I will be bringing to my work in future.
Just back from the Match Racing Nationals, run by the RYA and held at Queen Mary Sailing Club in London. I was doing mainsheet for Ian Dobson, with the rest of the crew consisting of Georgie Blaver-Mann (jib), Becky Sands (pit) and Sam Brearey (bow). Having never all sailed together and this being Ian’s second ever match racing event - the first being the Qualifier he won back in the Spring - we knew we were going to be up against it in a strong field including a pair of two-time previous winners in Nick Cherry and Mark Campbell-James.
After a slow start on Friday, we won won three races in a row to leave ourselves well placed in tied fifth place half way through the round robin. On Saturday we had a disastrous day results-wise losing all our matches, despite leading in all but one of them. We had a number of close matches and, ultimately, our lack of time sailing together probably cost us in a couple of situations.
We scraped into the quarter finals starting this morning, drawn against Mark Campbell-James, who has previously been ranked as high as 15 in the world. We therefore knew we were up against it but went into things knowing that if we eliminated some small mistakes we would have a good chance of winning. After a strong pre-start in race one, we let Mark off the hook and started even, but were unable to cross from the left, and we lost by around 20 seconds. In race 2, we again did well pre-start including putting a penalty on the opposition, although we started slightly behind. We tried to keep things close around the course but Mark was just able to complete his penalty on the line to win by around 10 seconds. Mark went on to win the event overall. Mark and I have known each other for several years having sailed together in 2001-2003 on ‘Bear of Britain’, so it was nice to see him still being competitive at this level.