Looking back at the week

Catch up with all the news links from last week

This was the week that despite conditions going soft, Frenchman OIivier de Kersauson was due to cross the Equator, just one week after leaving France on his Jules Verne Trophy attempt. On his record breaking run five years ago it took him 11 days 4 hours to cover this same distance.

From Auckland Nigel Cherrie brings us up to date with the Aucklandgate spying scandal and a visit by the Queen in the week leading up to the CORM regatta.

There was our review of leg four of the Volvo Ocean Race and of Ben Ainslie's excellent new book on Laser sailing and Nigel Cherrie's report straight from the closely fought Youth Match Racing Worlds in Auckland.

Aside from a Jules Verne Trophy attempt with her same all-girl crew from Royal & SunAlliance, in part one of her interview with James Boyd today Tracy Edwards discussed a twist in her plans to sail with a mixed crew and her wrangling over whether she should be on board Maiden II or not.

In his regular diary for madforsailing, Iain Percy, busy gearing up for the Star Bacardi Cup event gave us insight into a typical day in his life at the moment and why he has chosen Miami as his training venue.

And Wednesday was when we announced - no more free madforsailing? While sailing sites are going to the wall left, right and centre, madforsailing is not about to be one of them. To ensure you continue to get your independent global round-up of sailing news 365 days a year and to enable us to keep our top news hounds and star writers fed and clothed, we are asking for a paltry subscription fee.

This will be £24.99 per annum, but if you sign up before 25 March, you can take advantage of our special introductory offer of £14,99. You can take up this offer on line or by phoning +44 1454 642515 with your credit card details. You will then be emailed with a user name and password, enabling you to view the site once free access is no longer available as of 25 March. Click here to see the FAQs.

Also we had Ed Gorman's interview with Russell Coutts, part two of James Boyd's interview with Tracy Edwards about the Maiden II programme and a new boat for The Race, plus reports from the Sydney OD series, the Australian Keelboat Championships and the Rolex Women's Match racing.

Peter Bentley researched the vexing question of what exactly is an IMS 600, one of the classes chosen for next year's Admiral's Cup and how does one campaign a boat such as a Beneteau 40.7 in this supposed grand prix event?

In Auckland there was turmoil again within the Oracle Racing camp with Chris Dickson off the sailing team once again. Nigel Cherrie reports.

If you sail an Olympic class and want to take on our Olympians the RYA issued dates for their National Ranking series where there is £50,000 worth of funding to be fought for.

In feedback today we answered your many queries about the subscription (not answered in our Q&As), and Peter Bentley took a view on dinghy sailing in the UK, while John Greenland looked at the many different education/racing options open to those wanting to become pro-sailors.



As part of our lead in to the Sailboat and Windsurf show Gerald New previewed the 59er making its UK debut at Alexandra Palace. We publish an extract from Ben Ainslie's new book on Laser racing and former RYA guru Jim Saltonstall gives us his definitive venue guide to racing on Europe's largest man-made lake - Kielder Water in Northumberland.

One of Team Dennis Conner's training boats was dismasted and the CORM Race Committee Trials were postponed on the basis of a bad forecast. However most teams went out anyway and GBR Challenge lined up with OneWorld.

In the Jules Verne Trophy - Geronimo retired with steering problems and Orange set off this morning on her second attempt.