After our journey from hell in the French mountains, surely the Gods were going to look on us favourably as we left Palma for France.

Well, it turns out they weren’t. Honestly, we couldn’t make this stuff up….

Here’s a pic of the aftermath:

The upshot is this - 2 days ago we nearly lost the van, the boat and all our worldly possessions in a pretty frightening encounter. In fact, we’re lucky we walked away from this one relatively unscathed. Let’s start from the beginning…

(more…)

Whilst waiting for the ferry to leave Palma we had time to reflect on our first regatta of the season. Mainly because the queue for the ferry was about 3 hours long. Yes, believe it or not this is actually a queue (see if you can spot Jonny).

It’s easy to have a disappointing result and reflect negatively on the week as a whole. But all the symptoms pointed to the same thing - we lacked boatspeed. Sailing is a simple sport really - all you have to do is start well, hold your lane and wait to tack on the first shift. Do that and 95% of the time you’ll round the top mark in the chocolates.

However, in a fleet as good as the 470, you have big big problems if you lack speed. No matter how good your start, it is only a matter of time before you lose your lane, and then the first beat becomes a fight to find a clear lane. Your strategy is sunk, and you get spat out the back 9 times out of 10. Game over.

It’s an important lesson learned, and not one we plan to sit in on again. Fact: speed makes you a tactical genius. Our priority for the next 4 weeks is to break down the components of boatspeed and begin working on them in bitesize chunks.

Our next port of call is 10 days training in Sanary Sur Mer before the French Spring Cup.

The journey from St Chely to Palma is now over (we’re officially on Palma soil and we even went sailing today). But, the journey wasn’t without incident.

The stormy weather has been on the news over here. Lorries being blown off the road, winter blizzards leaving cars stranded etc etc.

And it was SO windy en route that we had to resort to a more radical approach. (more…)

Yes, just when we think it couldn’t get much worse, the last 24 hours have brought further news that warrants a part III of this saga. (more…)

Heaven help those who line up next to us on the start-line of that first race in Palma. We’ve already bottled up a week’s worth of anger and frustration. We’re like caged animals ready to be unleashed on their unsuspecting pray. Yesterday we were even mentioned in the French Press. 

We were supposed to leave St Chely yesterday.  (more…)

Later today we SHOULD be leaving the quaint French village of St Chely d’Apcher.

But we have more important news today… (more…)

 
It’s time for a follow up to our Palma journey misadventures.

The good news - the clutch is fixed. Yippee!

The bad news - we need a new gearbox.

Our bags were packed… morale was high… we even had a window of opportunity where we might even have made the 11 o’clock Barcelona ferry. The mechanic had even washed his hands from the job, and when a mechanic washes his hands you KNOW you’re almost good to go.

Max ran to the hotel room to pick up the final bits and pieces. Meanwhile the mechanic emerged and as usual started speaking too much French too quickly. After about 5 minutes I picked up on a few repeating phrases:

‘deux problemmes’

and

‘boite de vitesse’

A quick look in our French-English dictionary confirmed the worst… (more…)

It has been a bad 48 hours for Team Madcap.

 As we write this we are stranded in a cheap hotel room in a small village called St Chely d’Apcher somewhere in the French mountains. Unfortunately I can’t say that we’re here for the altitude training.

Any sailor who has come through the youth squad system has been spoon fed the concept of only focusing on ‘controlling the controllables’.  A different way of saying the same thing is that anything you are in control of, it is your fault if things mess up.

Normally, when something goes wrong we can isolate the cause by something we failed to prepare for (that’s how we learn). But, on this rare occasion I think we can genuinely say that we’ve been handed some rotten luck.

In short, the Slug has let us down.

We think it is something to do with the fact that her clock was on 99,400 miles - and she is reluctant to get older (she thinks it’s all downhill after 100,000 miles).

Here’s an account of the last 48 hours - (more…)

It is the ability to prioritise and make the right decision at the right time that wins you cups in sailing. Nowhere is this more evident than in the mission critical decisions you have to make in a full-time campaign…

… like choosing the colour of the gel-coat for the new boat you are about to order.

It has been proven that the right colour gel-coat equates to 6.5 boatlengths up a 20-minute beat.

Fact.

So naturally we sacrificed training on the water to discuss this key decision, and the debate got pretty heated. It turns out we have a difference of opinion, and we spent over 90 minutes putting forward each of our cases.

Unfortunately ISAF rules tie your hands when it comes to external hull colour - you’re allowed any colour as long as it’s grey. But on the decks you can exercise your stylistic flair (which realistically gives you a choice of 3-4 colours that the boat builder offers).

The boat we’re going for is a Mackay, and we have the choice of White, Grey, Blue or Green.

We both ruled out white and green immediately. Yuck. Which leaves us with the showdown:

Blue vs. Grey

I think the choice is pretty obvious, and I’m confident everybody is going to agree with me, but Jonny thinks otherwise. Here are a couple of pics:

Suffice to say, I don’t like the blue.

Here’s my choice:

Here’s a snippet of our discussion:

Max - You cannot be serious, I can’t believe they still make these in blue.
Jonny - Yeah, I used to hate it too, but it’s really grown on me. It’s retro, and retro is so in at the moment.
Max - You don’t say, it makes me want to grow an 80’s moustache, pull down my wetsuit and go for a wee in it. I’m sure our toilet used to be that colour when I was a kid.
Jonny - Grey is so bland though, it’s got no character. I feel more calm and relaxed even just thinking about that blue colour. I think it’ll make me a better sailor.
Max - Nice, I’ll remind you of that when you’re calmly asleep while we’re stuffed in the 2nd row at the start.
Jonny - all the top guys go for blue, it’s a statement of intent.
Max - I’ll give you a statement of intent in a minute…

Ok, so maybe we told a white-lie. Maybe gel-coat colour doesn’t figure quite so importantly in the boatspeed equation. Maybe it doesn’t warrant an hour and a half discussion. But when it is -4 degrees celcius and blowing 3 knots on a freezing reservoir in February, then you do anything you can to avoid the freeze-fest awaiting you on the water.

What is your opinion - blue or grey? I’ve a fiver riding on grey getting at least 80% of the vote.

A special Valentine’s message from Team Madcap: 

Roses are red,
Starboard is green,
Our love has no bounds,
For ‘2 for 1′ Soreen

Thanks to the Coop for their Buy One Get One Free malt-loaf special. You certainly know the way to our hearts.