Hyeres was quite a strange regatta for me, starting with travel disruptions due to the erupting volcano. I had left the car in Nice airport and flown home for a week, so was in a bit of a sticky situation when Gatwick airport was closed. Luckily Peter Aitken, who was standing in for Adam and coaching me at this regatta, came to the rescue and we drove down in his car. Our journey was no where near as impressive as Annie Lush, who was stuck in Palma. She sailed across to Barcelona on the yacht she had been racing on, and then cycled a total of 8 hours amongst jumping on trains and a crazy coach ride. I was sharing with Annie and Lucy in Hyeres and it was great to spend time with them again. It’s been a while since I jumped in the back of their Yngling in China.
The Saturday night before racing started the RYA organised for the team to go Go-Karting at the local track. It was brilliant and of course highly competitive, with most of the boys including Sparky believing they were the next Lewis Hamilton. Shirley arrived with her film crew to capture the action, and although there were a lot of crashes, everyone walked away unscathed.
Sunday arrived and with it a serious lack of wind. This became the familiar scene for the rest of the week, resulting in a lot of sitting around waiting. Luckily the RYA had their hospitality tent, so it made the waiting a lot easier and more enjoyable. We occupied our time chatting, reading books and competing in the timed wheel chair obstacle race. The wheel chair was kindly provided by John Robertson in the Sonar.
I had a great start to the regatta with a bullet in the first race and was leading the second until the finish where I was piped on the line by Damien (FRA13). We then had two races abandoned due to the wind dying. I was lying second in the first and had a massive lead in the second one, so was disappointed when the flag went up. At this stage I was lying joint first with Damien. We then had a day of no racing at all, which was really frustrating as the wind did finally fill in around 16:00. All the other classes went out and we were sent home. I really wanted to race as I had discovered I had awesome pace in the light conditions.
The next day was my birthday and I was hoping for a bit of birthday luck, I could not have been more wrong! Damien and I raced each other to the wrong side of the course and had the painful view of watching the rest of fleet sail past in considerably more wind than we had. I posted and O.K result in the next race, but found myself in the protest room, not a good place to be and was disqualified from the race. There was a dark mood in our apartment that night as Annie, Lucy and Allie had not had a good day either. I went out the next day feeling confident and positive, I was only 3 points off 3rd and as long as we raced, felt I had a good chance of getting on the podium.
Unfortunately an OCS in the first race finished of that hope, I got a 3rd in the last race, but with only one discard it meant I had to count my OCS and letters in your score line are never a good thing!
I did have a bit of bad luck with the wind dying in the two races that were abandon, but I was more frustrated and angry at myself for throwing the regatta away on some silly mistakes which ended up being really costly. There were some good lessons learnt and some positives to take away and I am now very much looking forward to Holland and Delta Lloyd regatta at the end of May.
This week I was in Weymouth doing a photo shoot for the RYA which was fine, the presentation and talk at Christ Church went well. It’s a lovely club I can’t believe I have never been there before!
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