By 'eck pet

madforsailing talked to Paul Brotherton about his recent successes at the Sailing Games and 49er Worlds

Despite his Olympic plans being thrown into turmoil a few weeks ago following his divorce from silver medallist Simon Hiscocks, Paul Brotherton has made a remarkable come back. He hastily teamed up with Mark Asquith to continue his 49er campaign for the 2004 Olympics. At the 49er Worlds recently in Hawaii the duo notched up third place overall behind Hiscocks and Chris Draper. Then in a rather unexpected move Brotherton took to a J/80 at the ISAF World Sailing Games. After a frustrating week, he again finished third.

"The reason for doing it was that things got a bit turned upside down six weeks ago when I was not sailing with someone and then started sailing with someone else and with the Worlds in Hawaii being a crucial event with the RYA and funding I wasn't certain if it was going to be disaster or 'thank god for that'. So I thought it would be a good time to get away and do some thinking," Brotherton told madfor sailing of his reasons for going to Marseilles.

But there were other issues at stake too. Brotherton turned 36 last week and in the 49er fleet this makes him someone entitled to a free bus pass. "I am very aware that I am getting on a bit and I haven't done an awful lot of competitive keelboat sailing and it was an opportunity to go sailing with Fumsey, [aka Simon Russell]. He was one of my team along with Simon Nurn and young Magnus Leask. I've seen Magnus go through Optimists and 420s and 470s now he's a 6ft 4in, 90kg 19 year old. It was nice to have him on the boat."

Russell is a keelboat sailor par excellence and has titles galore in the Melges 24s, Mumm 30s, Corel 45s as well as being current Etchells World Champion. "Fumsey hasn't won as many nationals, Europeans and Worlds as he has by being crap," says Brotherton. "He's someone I knew I'd enjoy sailing with and having sailed with him I have a massive respect for his skill and his ability and I learned an awful lot from him."

On board Brotherton helmed while Fumsey did tactics, an arrangement which started badly but got better. "We shared most of the tactical stuff, although if I'd have done half the things he said as opposed to just some of the things he said, we might have done a bit better. I did overrule on a couple of occasions one of which resulted in us doing a 720 and finishing last in the race. I didn't overrule after that."

So how was his baptism of fire in keelboats? "It is very different. To sail on those boats, you can't be as immediate, you can be a bit more seat of the pants in a dinghy. There are opportunities to do that in these boats and the races like we were doing - the boats were all pretty slow and the courses were quite short - but largely speaking you had to plan a long way ahead and think in advance of what was happening. You can't flick in a couple of tacks in at the windward mark on a small shift because you'd lose four boat lengths and that represents about 10 boats going round the mark." The light Mediterranean conditions didn't really present the opportunity for the J/80s to come alive.

Brotherton continues. "We struggled a little bit at the start of the week because I had no idea what I was doing with any of the bits of string I was presented with, but we slowly but surely worked it out, and managed to get the boat to get some speed and I think one of the things which helped us, was that as we got tighter in the finals I was a little bit more used to that, because 470 and 49er sailing is all about that - just crossing a boat made all the difference between being in there or not being in there and keeping your nose clean was bloody important. Not only was it 50/50 in the jury room, but you ended up waiting 6-7 hours for your protest because it was just a really long winded affair."

Although Brotherton said he thought the concept of the ISAF World Sailing Games was great, there were aspects of its organisation which, err, could have been improved. "I think ISAF need to consider better ways of utilising people's time. There is a lot of faff involved doing the regatta. For instance, one day we had 15 knots of breeze, beautiful sunshine, it came in at midnight and lasted until 9pm - all of which was sailable hours - and the race committee managed to get three 40 minute races in due to boats coming back in, the fleet having to be reseeded, new groups drawn, new groups then going to check the boat out, going out for one race, coming back in, rechecking the boats in, etc. So 15 knots, great sailing, great boats and we only got three 40 minute races in. Frankly, it was truly frustrating... Without that it would have been a great event. By Friday when we'd done two races we were counting the thousands of pounds per hour of racing we'd had, but as we got into the finals and got a bit more racing in, it was less frustrating."

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