GBR Team Celebrate

It's all over. Containers packed in 3 hours with great team effort.
Team GBR celebrate a gold medal, best performing nation, youth girls prize, 4 open boats in the top 10. Congratulations to Anabelle an Megan ladies champions and to the home nation boys. How are we going to get all the trophies on the plane? Now it's party time. Shirts have been swapped mainly with Argentinians, Italians and Germans. BBQ and beer and now the disco. Let's hope I don't have to wait up too late!

Last Launch

Its 13:00 and after an AP lasting 1 hour they have launched. When we arrived at the club it was drizzel and 6kts but as the rain stopped so did the wind.
The sailors amused themselves playing international basket ball with water bottles.
Now though the clouds have lifted and the breeze is back - let's hope it stays.
.....more soon

Update

All the team got home before the rain except Carla who had to stay for Nino's team leader briefing which was about the new 420 download produced by the GRE Nikos Drougkas , the number of mast breakages and black flags

Jonny now tells me that the coach on Neil's boat was the sailor from URU ( nothing to do with ECU) who could not afford another mast to continue his regatta but he is a coach. He was full of useful local knowedge.

Wind was 10-12 knots but increased to 14-15knots and was in its usual direction. Tide was pushing up the course which explains the BFD's . We had an ok day with little damage.. pity poor Ricardo ITA had two BFD's , one OCS and two protests and he only has eight boats here .

Ice cream time

Ice cream for sailors and beer for bosun's before the damage reports come in .. so far Matt Foz said "worst day I have ever had BFD and broken trapeze wire"  that's what happens when Dad splices your trapeze wires.. Toby and Matt BFD.. Harry and Tom's rudder stock repair has held..James and Tim being protested and  Ed and Tim are questioning  FRA on why they are protesting them?  Mike and Hermione could not catch their favourite CHI boat. ECU girls were out so story on their mast be wrong our source Neil obviously not reliable .

At the moment we have no major repairs  .. but the wind is building and the predicted storm is coming .. can we get out of the boat park before the rain  

Ready for Day 5

     Waiting in the dinghy park to go racing . More photographs in the album. Foz's first job was to help Harry and Tom repair their rudder stock which was cracked and all spares used. Thankfully Harry's dad had insisted he always carry a "useless" piece of metal which Foz found just right as a brace - sorted. Jonny and Neil had fill the fuel tanks (no smoking around the containers ). Annabel and Megan discovered that their broken mast had been completely stripped of its extras including spreaders (sorry Robert) it might have been Selden desperate for spares.

ECU 's Juan has jumped on our RIB to go and watch the racing. Their team cannot afford to buy another mast so they have dropped out of the competition. We did offer them one of our less bent ones but they declined. Alberto from naughtyvela was having similar issues with THA who have damaged  two masts , two mains and a rudder and their insurance was being iffy about paying .


Boys set off in 15 knots through the binoculars flat wiring in a moderate chop. Looks like about 10 black flag boats hanging around after several attempts to start. Girls seemed to get away cleanly.
........more news soon

Day 5

Same routine today as all the other days fitness followed by breakfast , briefing and the boat park.. more fingers to plaster up Jo's combination of ISR sticky stuff and electrical tape managed to survive the two races.

Everyone would like less wind so they can show off their light wind skills that's if they can remember them ..
Coaches would like a new wind direction its a steady 120 .. but we must not complain its two more race days and four races to go and the weather forecast is rain on wednesday something we have not seen at all. 

Yesterday we met Cedric the FRA coach who  is bringing 15 of his sailors to Weymouth 19th-25th Feb hopefully to do some training with our guys ..Ricardo is also coming to the UK and would like to add some ITA style to our training .

Thanks for all the emails of support. I keep reading them out to the team.. Hope Blanes gets some wind today would you  like some of ours ?? not sure I am ready to change sails for engine yet but thanks for the offer
The blog spelling could   improve now that after 2 weeks Carla has finally  found how the spell check works !!

We all go back for an early bath - Good Day

All Brits safely back in the dinghy park and only a broken rudder stock

Andy Foz is a happy chap having an early beer at 5.30!
Other teams not so lucky. The mast tally now stands at 29.
ITA girls were distracted by ARG boys having a pee off the back of his boat on the ladies start line only to capsize, break the mast and miss the start. "What was he doing there" says Ricardo
GER Jens Marten, leading German, broke his luff wire ending his day. As a result of this and Tim & Ed's rudder stock breakage, Mike and Hermione move up 2 places.
Annabel  and Megan owe us a team ice having achieved the first GBR bullet and retain 2nd in the Ladies.

More protests today, Ed & Tim and the Chilean team discussed an incident amicably but decided to shake hands for the sake of a place as against risking a DSQ.