http://www.lukemccarthy.com Luke McCarthy Professional Sailor Mon, 26 Jul 2010 07:37:00 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Last week, I ran a debrief on the recent St Malo race at RORC in London. There are a number of these race debriefs each year, the idea being to get people together and share ideas about what was successful for a particular race and (hopefully) for everyone to improve ... http://www.lukemccarthy.com/st-malo-race-debrief-at-rorc/ A busy few months again, including getting the sailing season started and finishing my Masters course for the year. Strong early season performances from the British Keelboat Academy Development squad sailors in J80s at the RORC Easter Challenge, now into the offshore series on 'John Merricks II'. The majority of my ... http://www.lukemccarthy.com/full-on-for-the-summer/ Well, it somehow seems to have been over three months since I managed to post any updates here. It has been an incredibly busy winter, however, mainly getting the British Keelboat Academy up and running. I've organised training sessions both on and off the water, as well as starting to ... http://www.lukemccarthy.com/where-did-the-winter-go/ Last weekend, I ran a selection weekend for the newly-formed British Keelboat Academy. Twenty eight sailors - from over 100 applicants - were invited to UKSA and put through their paces in a range of areas. This included sailing in UKSA's fleet of keelboats on Saturday, a night orienteering exercise ... http://www.lukemccarthy.com/british-keelboat-academy-selections/ Last night I attended the RORC annual dinner, held in the beautiful setting of Banqueting House in London. Several of the sailors from both 'John Merricks II' and 'Chernikeeff 2' were there to collect trophies for the season. Amy Prime from 'Chernikeeff 2' won the Duncan Munro-Kerr Youth Challenge Trophy ... http://www.lukemccarthy.com/rorc-annual-dinner-and-prizegiving/ 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 ... http://www.lukemccarthy.com/british-keelboat-academy/ 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 ... http://www.lukemccarthy.com/john-merricks-ii-winter-packup/ 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 ... http://www.lukemccarthy.com/weymouth-with-49ers/ 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 ... http://www.lukemccarthy.com/match-racing-nationals/ I've been busy with the young sailors from both Chernikeeff2 and John Merricks II this weekend beginning the packup of both boats for the winter. Jobs include completely emptying the boats and storing the equipment for the winter, checking and rolling sails and removing the mast for safe storage and ... http://www.lukemccarthy.com/end-of-season-packup-weekend/