Force 470- French Olympic Week completed

by Andrew Brown on 29 Apr 2007
We are on the Cathay Pacific flight back to New Zealand, this being my first opportunity since our last day of racing to sit down and write this report to you.

Firstly my apologies for you all not receiving my reports during the regatta, as French Olympic Week is a well run regatta in all parts except the lack of internet connection; you wouldn’t think this such a big deal but when you have around 1000 competitors from around the world trying to communicate home via the internet, the internet connection has to be one of the first priorities on an organisations list of things to do.

Therefore some of you got reports and some no reports, once again my apologies.

After our first day in gold fleet we dropped a few placing’s overall after qualifying in 24th position. Points were still close though and the last race day dawned with no wind but for a forecast of winds quickly reaching 20 to 25 knots by the second race.

The first race managed to get away on time in 15 knots – we got a perfect start down at the pin end and with good speed in this condition were 5th to the top mark, losing some boats downwind who stayed high in pressure, but up the second beat we again gained on boats until not for the first time in this regatta the Finn fleet were sent through our course by the race officer, getting caught in the Finn fleet, boats behind could see this happening to us and managed to avoid the 'cats knitting'. We therefore lost a lot of boats to finish in 21st.

We had an average start in the second race of the day but picked up a nice right shift to get us in the 20ies – again losing boats downwind, but managed to have another great beat passing 8 boats through speed and good shifts to get another 21st placing.

This day showed a weakness of our downwind speed when racing, as when we are training we have okay speed downwind. Something we are to work on.

In saying this we moved up the rankings to 32nd which was a great result for our first international regatta together with such hard conditions for a first regatta. With this placing we beat many top sailors including the double world champions from Australia, the 4th placed and also the bronze medal winners from the Athens Olympics as well as many other top sailors – not too bad at all.

We have already set our sights much higher for the rest of this year with a performance based program if our funding and family committments allow this.

After racing we got into shore and were allowed an hours break and were straight back out there with Kiwi coach for the regatta Pete Nicholas for more punishment; working on our upwind height and especially our downwind speed techniques – just a magical afternoons training with a few more practise races thrown in for good measure.

Pete’s infectious enthusiasm rubbing off on us all.

The next day the whole team awoke just knackered but ready for another short hard session – again very beneficial and more steps forwards being made.
This wasn’t the end of the mission though; a pack up of equipment in readiness for the Europeans had to be done, a clean and check of the apartment before being dropped off in Nice to be here on our flight to Hong Kong then Auckland!

The two big highlights for the team was the third placing in 1 of the races and the second highlight was how much we learnt and with how steep our learning curve is; how exciting the next 6 months are going to be.

We are home for the next four weeks, raising money for the next trip, working; training with the NZ based 470 fleet on the water, and in the gym, but most importantly we will be spending time with our respective lovely families.
Thank you to all our current sponsors, supporters and family for all your great help and support in our campaign.

cheers and best regards

Andrew and Nick
FORCE470
NZL199

www.force470.org.nz