Burling and Tuke update on their 49er Olympic campaign

by Peter Burling and Blair Tuke on 22 Jan 2009 Peter Burling and Blair Tuke report on their 49er campaign:

Hope you managed to get some time for a relaxing break over Christmas/New Year.

We took the 49er up North to Kerikeri for three weeks where the water was warm and the weather superb. Cross training on the wakeboard when there was no wind and surfing when the waves were up was fun too.

Our 49er boat is just holding together with lots of breakages and regular repairs to be done on the hull.
Hopefully our new 'Mackay' hull will be arriving at the end of Feb.

ONE News screened some footage of us pre Christmas – a bit of carnage in the big NE waves and fresh puff off
Takapuna. Exciting sailing but after breaking the rudder blade we capsized with Blair coming off second best with
the side of the hull. Nothing that 6 stitches above his eye wouldn’t fix and the Doc did an excellent job sewing him up. More resin and fibreglass fixed the hull and the broken tip of the wing.

The new 49er one-design Southern Spars mast is working a treat. The mast is a bit stiffer and the new big top main sail is a little fuller. A few scratches on the top of the mast suggest that it may have touched the bottom a few times. We still have a few things to learn about keeping the boat upright in big breeze and waves. We are told that the old design of mast would have broken a number of times already with the conditions we
have been out in.

To help with our 'Open Water' skills we sailed against the keelboats in a 22 mile around the Islands race from Kerikeri. It took us just under 2 hours and Peter got a quick sightseeing look around Blair’s home waters in the Bay of Islands. Averaging over 11 knots VMG.

We also took the opportunity while in Kerikeri to practice our Teams Racing in 420 boats –we are both competing in Perth in the Teams Racing Worlds in the first week of Feb. Derry Godbert, NZ’s teams racing guru, was able to give us some expert coaching.

Thanks to Steve Roberts of NZSail.com for offering us his Melges 24 for the BMW week regatta in Auckland (Feb 20-22nd) Another chance to race using a gennaker.

Exams results are back … - Peter -good enough to qualify for Engineering at Ak University. He moves into O’Rorke hall from Tauranga at the end of Feb. - Blair - passed his Electrical Regulation papers.

Our big aim this year is the 49er Worlds in Italy in July – we will do Kiel week shortly before that which will be our first major 49er regatta. Unfortunately we miss Sail Auckland this year as we will be at the Teams Racing Worlds in Perth.

Peter and Blair

Kerikeri