This weekends regatta was the last in a series of victories this year for Team Styles, now the UK National and Inland Champion as well as winner of Carnac and Texel course racing and 3rd place finish at the F18 worlds. The Grafham event was a great medium to windy regatta, where Styles Nacra Infusion yet again proved it pedigree with 4 out of 6 race victories.

Saturdays racing was staged in a great 10 – 13 knots, double wiring mostly with shifty offshore winds from the South West. The first race was a tight affair to the first mark with 7 boats all getting there at the same time and a good tussle for the lead, after the first lap it was down to Styles and Grant Piggott in second with Luke Yates third. Styles extended for the next few laps to take the gun and the first win of the weekend.

Race 2 and Hugh and Kyle lead from the first cross up the beat and built a commanding lead over Johnathan Worthington in second also on a Nacra Infusion, with Grant Piggott Nacra Infusion third. This changed abruptly when Kyle Stoneham unfortunately hooked onto the elastic on the last downwind leg to the finish and left Styles trying to stop a capsize then recover the kite and sailor, the team dropped from 1st to 9th and Worthington capitalised on the opportunity to win the race.

Race 3 A perfect port end start for Styles and Stoneham in their Infusion, giving them a great jump on the fleet, leading at the first mark and never to be headed! Worthington had another cracking race, with really good speed, Grant Piggott sailed a great steady race to finish 3rd another counting result in tough conditions.

Saturday night the social activities flowed, with the F18, Handicap and Shearwater classes all competing at drinking games, until everyone went down to the Wheatsheaf pub. Sunday dawned with a big breeze forecast and an opportunity to blow away the cobwebs of the night before, needed by some far more than others!

Race 4 Sunday morning and a start in 15 knots with a heavily port biased line, Styles and Stoneham took full advantage of this and charged off on Starboard into the left side for the pressure, and arriving in at the top mark closely followed by Jon Wothington. The wind built steadily through the race, but Styles was never headed and it was then down to the minor placings to duke out for 2 – 3 overall.

Race 5 and another 5 knots increase which made the average wind speed 20 knots. Still a massive port bias on the line and this time Styles played the Joker card with a flying port tack start, then converging on a tight Starbord lay line just rounding ahead of Stuart Gummer and Grant Piggott in third. Styles maintained this through to the finish and Gummer maintained 2nd with Piggott 3rd.

Race 6, just before the start 24 knots was read on the start boat and by the time the gun had gone it was over 30 knots. The fleet was down to 5 boats after a lot of the boats had had gear failure, but this didn’t deter some tight and testing racing, with Chris Sproat and Lewis Crawford in their Viper leading for 2 laps with the places changing a lot behind them. They had a mishap though and just on the last downwind gybe they capsized and lost the race. Gummer sailed a really strong race to pull through and win the race from Styles in second and Piggott in third.

The overall regatta finishing positions ended as follows:
Hugh Styles and Kyle Stoneham, Nacra Infusion
Grant Piggott and Andy Sinclair, Nacra Infusion
Luke Yates and Matt Humphries, Wildcat

Thanks to Grafham water sailing club, and the rest of the regatta organisers, also for Nacra Europe making this possible with their Help, Boskalis for their great support throughout the year. Then to the UK F18 class organisation for making the years regattas come about. There is one last event which is the Weston Cat Open on 6&7 of November, which is the Nacra UK Nationals 2009, please come and join in the fun. I am now off to Sydney for some R&R with my long suffering girlfriend and then a load of Extreme 40 racing over the winter in Hong Kong, then Singapore and final event in Muscat Oman.

This week has been manic with returning from the Almeria Extreme 40 event after a 12 hour delay to the flight from Spain back to the UK.

Thursday I was in Holland to work out the plans for the winter and next year with Nacra Europe for sailing F18 next year, lots of good discussions and my proposal went down well, so waiting for a reply.

Now back on the Isle of Wight sailing an Etchells at the Uk Nationals with Graham Sunderland, we had a 1, 4, 9 today and have one race tomorrow, its good and close racing and today we had a dying breeze from the North and offshore and very shifty. it was good to be sailing some slower and really close racing rather than the extreme 40 which is all a bit bigger tacking angles and harder crosses to call as the closing distances are so big.

Tomorrow is the last day and we have plenty to play for with it all close between 3 boats for the placings 2nd to 4th.

Hugh

Yesterday was one of the best days for our team in the 2009 iShares Cup circuit. The venue was a very tricky place for racing, but the races kept coming and the races got closer and closer.

We had a great last few races, and if the radio had worked better we would not have been ocs in the 3rd race of the day. We finished the afternoon with a 2nd in the penultimate race and a 5th in the last race. BT and Holmatro our main opposition in the overall circuit had a shocking result in the last double points race. This jumped us up the circuit leader board and we finished 6th in Almeria and oh so close on the circuit standings, with iShares a 5th overall wow after a fully up and down season its been a good result all in all.

catch you soon.

Hugh

Today was a scorcher and all the suspicions of the venue being a windless rather than windy venue were confirmed today, not a breath till about 6pm!

New team for this race on the ishares x40, and were joined by my f28 sailing mate Mischa Heemskerk from Holland, hurrah, the rest of the team is me Shirley Robertson and Nick Hutton.

Looking forward to this and then looking forward to the Extreme 40 racing circuit over the winter, which will be going to Hong Kong 20 – 24 Nov, Singapore 9 – 15 Dec, Oman 28 Jan – 6 Feb, Maldives 3 – 8 March.

Anyway its late and i need all the beauty sleep i can get before the event starts and then i am broken and nackered.

ciao hugh