GBR Challenge diary

madforsailing hears from enthusiastic bowman Nik Pearson

Here's the scene.....I´m lying on a beach in Fuerteventura, making the most my first full week off since starting with GBR Challenge seven months ago. I've decided to celebrate winning the Etchells World Championships by taking a course in kiteboarding. Its 28 degrees, blowing 20 knots, there are windsurfers and kiteboarders carving up the surf and I get a phone call from our PR company.

"We ´d like you to write a 400-500 word article please based on your experiences so far asap!" "WORK!!" my girlfriend exclaims, but to me it's not, and that's just it!

To explain I'd have to go back to when it all started for me. At school I was a nobody! "Impossible!" I hear you cry, but because I didn't play football, I just wasn't cool! But then, in 1988, I took my first course in sailing, and my life as I know it now began.

I was soon doing well in my local area, inspired by the Freemantle America's Cup and the campaign of White Crusader which were captivating the country at the time. I remember watching a drama about Ben Lexcen and the secrets and conspiracies involved with the winged keel of Australia II. I remember learning how to play "Going Home - theme from Local Hero" by Mark Knopfler on the keyboard - the British Team's anthem. I remember creating a scrapbook of cuttings and pictures on Peter de Savary's radical Blue Arrow Challenge. I remember the amazing press conferences, with Dennis Conner admitting defeat to the Aussies with the statement, "check, check, check, mate!"

I was so captivated that at my first opportunity I started Match Racing, originally as helmsman but after realising where the real men are on a boat, I moved to the bow! A dream became a reality in March this year when I could proudly say I was a member of Peter Harrison´s GBR Challenge.

I was lucky. As soon as my contract started I was off to France Match Racing, New Zealand for the Steinlager / Line 7 Cup and then to Oz for the Sun Microsystems Australia Cup, almost avoiding the clearing, weeding and painting of the new base in Cowes!

When I returned the real fun started - there is nothing quite like sailing an IACC Boat. The sense of power at your finger tips is almost frightening and to harness this power and make it work in a race is like nothing else. It would be easy to quote from our documented notes on sailing about the counter rotating winches, about gybe peels, or about chase-boat drops but I wouldn´t know where to begin. Instead I'd like to mention the biggest effect I've personally noticed - that of the team.

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