Final win leaves our top Tornado team in third

reports Hugh Styles in his fourth and final diary from SPA Regatta

An excellent finish to this year's SPA regatta ensured that we finished in third place overall. One race on the last day meant that we needed a good performance to maintain our third place overall. This we did, winning the last race of the series in convincing style.
Going back to Saturday however, we had a day where nothing seemed to go right at all. The wind direction had changed to blow very weakly from the south west, opposite to that of the previous three days where we had a building thermal breeze. The wind was very fickle and hard to predict with a calm just after the finish of race one. We never really got to grips with the conditions. Unfortunately this was compounded by the fact that we had a problem with a lack of boat speed upwind, particularly crucial in such a top quality fleet of sailors where if you don't get into the top five at the first mark it is virtually impossible to get a top finishing position.

In the three races we were nine, 17 and 15, which just got us some points on the SPA scoring system (first place 15 and 15th place one point). Fortunately for us our immediate competition had relatively poor races also and overall we maintained our third overall going into the last day. The top two however extended on us which put them out of touch for us with just one race on the last day.

The other Brits had a slightly better day than us, and the overall results meant that the positions were as follows:

1 - AUT Hagara
2 - NED Booth
3 - GBR Styles
4 - ESP Enchavarri
5 - GBR Macmillan
8 - GBR Wilson
18 - GBR Lovegrove

Going into the last day we were three points in front of the Spanish in fourth race and then seven points in front of Leigh Macmillan in fifth and then about ten in front of the French team in the sixth. All to play for and a weather forecast of light to moderate winds on the Saturday night meant that there was a chance for another day of fickle conditions on Sunday.

As it turned out the day began with about eight to ten knots from the south west and a change to the forecast which suggested an increase in the wind strength to about 18 knots with rain showers - a great way to end the regatta after the previous four days of sun and wind. Only one race scheduled and it all rested on that performance - right down to the wire.

We were out to the start early to ensure that we got into sync with the weather conditions early. Tested the upwind leg and decided on our strategy and then settled into the start routine. We wanted to protect the right hand side of the race track on the upwind and opted for the starboard end of the line. In the last few seconds before the start we had an incident with a crazy Italian who was trying to reverse into a non-existent gap in front of us on the start line. Fortunately we managed to fend off any disasters but didn't have the best start as a result of that.

We kept to the upwind game plan and headed off towards the right hand side of the beat, tacking for what we thought was the lay line for the windward mark, but which turned out to be a different mark. We came back to the centre of the course and found that the guys who had kept to the left hand side of the beat had been sailing in more pressure and as we converged on the windward mark we rounded about seventh or eighth. The downwind was just a matter of keeping in the bands of more wind and we pulled out all the stops down the run, overtaking four boats and got ourselves into fourth place at the leeward mark.

One upwind and downwind to go we were poised to gain on those in front of us. Taking the left side of the second beat to start with we hooked into a great gust and tacked and came across the beat on a nice lift on port tack. We gained a huge amount on port and when we tacked back for the starboard lay line for the windward mark we were leading, with the Austrian (leader overall) in second and German in third with Netherlands (second overall) in fourth.

That was the last we saw of the competition. We extended down the last run into the finish and ended with a comfortable lead at the finish. Dead chuffed to have finished the regatta on such a high note. Our competition for third was literally left in our wake. We had stamped our authority on third place. Leigh Macmillan ended the regatta in fifth after average points in the last race having been hit by a Portuguese sailor. Rob Wilson maintained his eighth position overall and Steve Lovegrove lying in 18th.

Looking forwards now, we have more technical developments to update on the boat, getting our self-tacking jib sheeting system fully operational, and a good deal of sail development for the new stiff masts we are using. All aims are now aligned for the Tornado European Championships in the third week in August in Silvaplana Switzerland.