Hugh Styles and Adam May diary

Team GBR cat specialists send this report from last weekend's regatta in Martha's Vineyard

We have been over in the US since early this month training and most recently competing in a small regatta at the venue of the 2002 Tornado Worlds this coming September.

Martha's Vineyard is a small island similar in size to the Isle of Wight, located off the east coast of the States about an hour south of Boston. The island is like a small English colony with fish and chip shops dotted here and there in the small towns on the island.

We have been training here in the bay where we will sail the Tornado Worlds competition late in September. We have had a variety of conditions during training and competition which has helped us to learn a great deal about the specific wind conditions we are likely to expect when sailing on these waters.

We have been training against the top US Tornado team which has been a good bench mark for us throughout the period we have been here. Unfortunately we had a problem when we flew out here as we couldn't get our sails on the plane so had to leave them back in the UK. Thus we have been having to sail with borrowed sails from the guys we have been sailing against. Although not ideal we have learned a great deal about the way that their sails work which has been a good learning experience.

The regatta we sailed in has been over the last three days with two races a day. We started our series off well by winning the first race in very shifty offshore wind conditions. Huge gains and losses were possible during the race and we sailed consistently in the testing conditions to win the race by about two minutes or more.

The second race was in a similar northwesterly wind direction, slightly lighter wind strength but still very shifty changeable winds. We held second position for most of the three lap race until the end of the last leg when the wind died and then filled in again, we maintained second but the lead changed from the team from the US to a Canadian team. So by the end of the first day we were leading.

Day two dawned with a forecast North North Westerly wind, opposing the sea breeze direction and so an unstable wind direction. This was very much the
case as race one turned into another race which turned inside out on the last leg with the breeze dying to nothing and then filling in again from the opposite direction our main rivals the US team had a shocker with a fifth place finish, good for us as the series was a no discard series. We sailed smart and kept our boat in the ball game finishing second in a very tricky finish. Race 4 started with the wind blowing from the South West the sea breeze direction and built quickly to 12 knots. Another second place finish in much steadier wind a good safe result.

Saturday and the last day of racing with the wind in the South West at about 18 knots average and gusts of 23 knots. This provided good testing racing in an offshore wind making it gusty and patchy. The first race of the day began badly for us as Adam's trapeze wire broke just after the start, so we were down to just one wire until we could fix it on the downwind leg. This set us back and we were not able to get back in tough with the US team leading the race. The second race was closer but by this stage we were having to nurse the boat round the race course, as it was falling apart in the strong winds.

We managed a solid second place, completing our series with a nice 1,2,2,2,2 score line. This won us the regatta comfortably with the US team second and the Canadians third.

Now we have a couple of days training before we leave for the UK. We are looking forward to getting back to the UK so we can finish the building work on our new boat ready to go into the container for sending out here to the worlds for September.

We would like to thanks all our supporters: UK sport lottery fund, Airbus UK, P & O Stena Line, Holt, Marlow, Gill, Oakley, Fat Face, CraftInsure.com, Tacktick, Specialised Marine, North sails

Styles and May in action