Hugh Styles diary

After a disappointing season it all comes good for Team GBR's Tornado aces

After a really tough year we've managed to turn it around and end on a high note.

About seven of the top ten Tornado teams in the World at the moment have chosen to train in the US this winter and the US Nationals was the first event following the 2002 World Championships for everyone to check out their winter development programmes.

Last year the British squad trained in isolation in the UK and Portugal, but with insufficient benchmarking against the foreign teams we arrived at the first regattas of the year with a speed problem that hindered us all season. For once the season has started it is hard to play catch up, and although we felt we'd slowly closed the gap on the top teams during the year, the Worlds dealt us with some different conditions in which we struggled.

To move forward we decided we needed to train over the winter with some fast foreign teams, and get a bit more regatta practice in during the 'off-season'. So following the Worlds we started training with the Dutch pairing of Sven Karsenbarg & Mischa Heemskerk, (Probably the fastest guys in a breeze in the World at the moment) and while many teams took a big break after the Worlds we spent a few weeks over in Holland, along with a load of UK training.

So armed with some new sails from a Dutch loft we have now started to use, we arrived in Florida early and had a really productive week of tuning. It has been an exciting time, as we've learnt so much in the last few months. It appears that there is always something more to be learnt about sailing these boats!

Sorry, enough of a background, on to the racing:

We were treating the regatta as a good bit of training, with starting practice and sail testing as the main aims. With a 19 boat fleet it was a good sized and very competitive fleet. The first race went well for us, and in a bizarre light wind race in which it got so misty at times that you couldn't see the marks and many of the other boats, we got a 2nd. With the wind dropping and the mist engulfing the fleet, racing was abandoned for the day, and everyone was left to head for shore (or try and find it anyway!) We knew the beach was basically east of us, and made it home okay. but some Canadian was found heading west quite sometime later - completely lost!

The second day dawned with big breeze and unfortunately a big pitch pole before the start (I was thrown round the front and cleared the kite easily!) broke some battens in the mainsail, and we had to go back to the beach to change them, and thus missed the second race. Not a perfect way to use up your discard in a one discard series with ten races! We pulled off a 6th and a 4th in the remaining races though, showing good pace in the breeze. We had in fact been 2nd in the first race, and 1st in the second, before shifts on the second beats caught us out. But to be lying 4th after 4 races with a discard was pleasing in such good company.

Medium breezes on the third day provided another change in conditions and we had a consistent day with three results in the top 5, to take us equal third going into the last day.

It took the fleet a while to get out to the start on the last day with the winds close to the class minimum limit of 6 knots, but after a short wait racing was started. We played the middle but the breeze shifted right and those furthest to that side came in looking really good. We rounded just outside the top five though, and pulled through quickly to fifth, and stayed there for most of the race until the final run where we used our good downwind pace, and a few better sailed shifts to sneak into third. We'd beaten the American team we were on equal points with, but Mitch Booth and Roman Hagara had beaten us, moving Mitch one point further ahead, and Roman up to equal points with us. Sven and Mischa had a tenth and we moved past them to be equal second (Third on count back though).

The next race went well for us, rounding second at the first mark we worked our way into the lead by the last windward mark. We had a nice lead down the run, but the wind started to drop a lot and shift, and we got passed by two guys just near the finish who'd gone hard into the right corner. We'd played safer on a more middle/right line, protecting our lead over Roman Hagara, but the shift and dying breeze got us! The breeze died away so much though, that shortly after finishing the remaining race of the day was abandoned. Mitch Booth had had a bad last race, which turned out to be his discard, giving us the championship by a point!

While a few snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, we proved how important consistency is in putting together a regatta. Bit of a shame really though, as each race winner won $50 and the overall winner got only a fleece! Oh well!

1st GBR Styles & May 2,(DNF),6,4,2,5,4,3,3 29pts
2nd NED Booth & Derckson 9,2,2,2,8,4,1,2,(10) 30pts
3rd AUT Hagara & Steinacher 4,5,4,(DNF),3,1,8,1,8 34pts
4th USA Guck & Farrar 5,(DNF),5,1,4,6,2,5,9 37pts
5th ARG Lange & Espinola 11,3,7,3,(ocs),3,5,4,2 38pts
6th NED Karsenbarg & Heemskerk (14),1,1,5,6,2,3,10,12 40pts

It has been a tough year, not quite going according to plan, but we probably needed a bit of a shake up, and better to have it in 2002 than any other year! It has often been said that each Olympics is harder than the last, and I'd have to agree with that. If this was easy, everybody would have a go!

We've now got a bit of a break, and some much needed 'down-time' until the middle of January when we come back out to the US again for some more training and the next regattas.

So it will be Christmas in Jamaica for me, and then back to the UK for new year, so watch out!

I hope everyone has a great Christmas and New Year. All the best.