Hair-raising Hyeres

Mark Asquith survives to tell the tale to madforsailing

The time away for us was an absolutely wicked and invaluable experience. We found ourselves with some up-there results and not-so up-there results always giving us plenty to talk about and improve.
Sparky [the Olympic coach] seemed very happy with our improvement in Hyeres managing to get to the top mark in 85 per cent of the racing in the top 10 only to ruin it downwind somewhere or not even manage to bear away in one race. It was the first time we had raced in such breeze. Breeze which also saw the Hyeres champions in the drink at the windward mark in one of the races.

We redefined the world of flying on numerous occasions, managing to come face to face with the forestay several times and every other time always thinking: "Christ, where are we going to end up this time?" The scariest one was when we were trying to make the finish downwind after a late layline call in 20kts of breeze with a few rollers coming through. The constant chat of 'we're laying' 'no we're not' 'we're laying' 'no we're not' carried on until the nose caught a wave, at full pace.

Matt swung forward like a conker on a string looking to be destroyed, I stayed in my strap as the boat came to an immediate stop. Instead of going forward it decided to go straight down leaving me dangling from my strap, up in the air with the bow about 6ft under, eventually coming back down to earth with a 49er on top of me. We got a big cheer for that one though.

The outcome was all very positive from the whole trip away. Big progress was made, big lessons were learnt and this will be taken forward to the next team.

Mark is off to the Europeans next week, this time crewing for new 49er boy (but highly talented 470 sailor) Chris Draper.