This month we have had two major events: The first was a national ranker at Warsash SC and the second was the Breitling regatta (formally Spa) in Medimblik, Holland.

The National ranker was held in the choppy waters just outside Southampton water. The first day of the event was wet and windy. With a 30kt South Westerly the day was called off at 12.00. On Sunday the weather looked promising, with about 8kts when we launched, however as soon as we got out to the race area the breeze blew up to a fresh 20-23 kts.

We had a good start and were in a solid position around the windward mark, however on the bear away we hit a gust and pitch poled ripping our spinnaker bag from the boat. Unfortunately that stopped us competing in the rest of the races for the day so we didn’t manage to compete in a race.

On the plus side out boat handling was good, and prestart we completed all of our manoeuvres (tack, gybe, bear away etc) with no trouble in the difficult chop.

The second big event of the month was the Breitling regatta in Holland. Most of the regatta was sailed in difficult conditions, a shifty 3-5kts. We went to the event with a similar mindset to Hyeres, we were clear in our process goals and the aim was to improve our sailing, the result was secondary.

The event was very positive, if a little frustrating. We made vast improvements on our starting and leeward mark roundings but a lot of the time we were top 10 to 15 around the windward mark, but a lack of boat speed and experience in the fleet meant that we were losing places all around the course.

The next stage is to do lots of training, we have been invited to all of the Olympic transitional squad camps for the rest of the year. Most of the areas where we were losing out in Hyeres and Holland were very controllable and time on the water with the rest of the squad will give us a chance to get all of these sorted.

Over the next couple of months we have plenty of 49er training arranged, including a week with Ian Barker the coach to the Olympic team in preparation for the European championships in Sicily in June.