world championship dart 18 at weymouth & portland

from 21st august for a week i was competing in the world championships at weymouth and portland  where the 2012 olympics will be held.

weather was really windy completed 4 races dnf in 2 races dns 3 races from 9.
came 115th from 131  crewed for james kundert from stokes bay on #2800 Here and now

summer series 9

the wind was 15 gusting 21 knts when i arrived at the club and the waves were building in the bay, the forecast was the wind was going to drop according to windguru . i decided not to race and rich miller imediatly asked did i want to crew for him or he wouldnt be sailing either, so as for pratice crewing for the worlds i said yes ok, but bear in mind i hadnt crewed for ages. we set off and got some trapeze pratice in, it went ok so i was happy for the race. we got a good start and rounded in 3rd place martin overtook us upwind as he was pointing higher than us, we got in front when rich decided to go different on the downwind leg, it paid off on the first attempt and finally paid offf nicely on the last lap when we took over 500 metres out of martin to finally take 3rd from 5
greg and mike 5th
overall i was very pleased and i hope i didnt mess richard up too much.
i hope to be able to crew for him again and learn a few more things from him.

3rd august training

a day out and off to Swanage  where else. Richard needed some training on the helm and today was a good day for it, learning how to head up and stop the boat was my first task as he clearly didn't know what to do when overpowered, se capsize from prev sessions. we then did lots of pratice gybes and finally some beating, which to be honest scared me too death when he kept putting the bows under the water.
finally he said he had enough PHew !!! so i took the boat in for him.
all in all he did better than the first atempt.
about an hours sailing

Summer series 8

we made another really good start on the line like yesterday  but couldnt tack off because richard m was windward of us when we did we made good progress. we battled with nic and then greg when we made a tactical mistake going into the course. we later recaught greg  and overtook only to lose it again when guess what the mainsheet came out again, only this time we stopped back in front of the solent cruiser, we made the rope off as fasta s possible after drifted right across his bows. it was like we were playing chicken with the big boys and seeing if they knew the rights of the road at sea, we guestured to them thankyou for stopping and then made good speed back to the line we then reoover took greg and then he just piiped us to the line.
a good fun weekend sailing
and we had the regatta on the saturday night as well.

knoll beach race

we made a good start to the race and had all the other cats beat on the upwind section. we had a penalty over mark g for crossing on port  nothing we could do really as the wind dropped, we did a 360 and then flew down the beat on port to overtake him and round the mark in 2nd place.
we then led for a while cross gybing with mark and mike, however an rs400 was well away as well.
the run turnedinto a beat after old harry and we had to tack inward for the bar bouy however the direction change wasnt so good and we got overhauled by all the 18's. we finnished last but one but it was a good sail and who cares where we finnish  we had fun.
on the way back it was very good with a few fluky patches under the cliffs at old harry. the beat into swanage was very fast.

old school

today we had arranged for an old school friend to visit swanage and go sailing, wind was very light after the bay had cleared of misty rain, after a visit to the far side and then over to pevril and back our task was done and back to the club ready for the knoll beach race. when i went to pull the rudders up  i snapped the tiller bar, luckily mike lent me one for the race and had mended it by the sunday morning. thanks mike.
sailing time 1hr