Leading race 1 In Garda, the one race we did have some breeze

42 days, 3 regattas, some 150 hours on the water, with some of the best racing in the world, this was made better when Heleen turned up and we went sight seeing though Europe.

It was awesome to travel though Spain, France and Italy with the highlights being Barcelona and the wacky Gaudi architecture, Provence which was so beautiful and Monaco which was just out of control with huge boats, casinos, and plenty of rich people.

Gaudi is radical man

I raced in Palma (Spain), Lake Garda (Italy) and Hyeres (France)

Garda is a mecca for sailing, windsurfing and road cycling. The cliffs up either side of the lake are amazing. With plenty of snow on the tops of them, u wanted to make sure you have enough warm gear. Garda is renowned for consistent breezes every day, due to a thermal effect, but for 4 straight days, we had no wind. At times we had some breeze we could sail in, but due to the lake being over 200 meters deep, the race committee just had to wait for the breeze to come from the right direction as try struggled to pull the anchor lines up.

In Palma,  a dutchie hit me in the qualifying series and snapped my gudgeons off, I had to lodge a redress and was lucky to get it which lifted me into 7th going into the medal race. This was the second medal race I have competed in, in Europe, last year in my first medal race I was over the line, this time I just finished last, but at least I was there right.

The last regatta I competed in was Hyeres regatta, this would have to be one of the best venues in the world for sailing. You are living over top of the venue, amongst 1000 other competitors. it so much fun. They have got some massive tents set up, with something always happening, there is just such a buzz at this event, the music is pumping 24 hours a day and u can feel the excitement. this regatta was full of ups and down (for everyone) I was super happy with my first 3 days, but could not make it work for the final couple, I was not alone with several big names not even making gold fleet.

Bottom mark, very close racing in Hyeres

I had a great trip to Europe, Probably the coolest thing I did the whole time I was over there was when I went sailing in La Spezia, I sailed out from the city, around a corner and up a channel between and an island and the mainland, it was  a reasonably narrow channel, and when I got to the end it was very narrow with an old castle and a small town, I sailed out off the channel and was in Med, where I could see the 5 small villages perched on cliffs that we had walked between the day before. So cool.

We saw a lot of stone buildings and narrow streets

I finished with a 10th in Palma, a 3rd in Garda, and 32nd in Hyeres.

I have now started my training back in Wellington where I will be based for the next 3 months before I head back to Great Britain for Sail For Gold, and the Laser World Championships.

Cheers
JJ

The last 2 weeks of training have been awesome. with some 40 hours of sailing time on the water, 10 gym sessions, 5 massive mountain bike rides and a spin class. Elliot Cree has been out on the water twice a week, It has been awesome to have someone look at how im sailing, I think we have made some big gains, especially in boat handling, and up wind boat speed in the breeze. I have been working with Steven Hotter in the gym, where not only have I gained strength, but I have dropped a couple of kilos. Here's some images of my bike ride today.


At the start of the track, next to the turn off, to the dump

Red Rocks after a long down hill
 

Here's an over view of what has been happening over the NZ summer, and what is coming up.

Match Racing: The New Zealand summer has been very successful for our team. Our goal leading into summer was to get our ranking back in to the top 40.  We have scored three 1st places at the New Zealand Keel Boat Nationals, the Musto Cup and the National Bank Cup. We also placed second in the Hardy Cup. In addition Matthew Steven took the helm at the CetntrePort Champs and won to back up his third place at the Harken Cup. It has been a great summer and I personally am very happy with how things have gone.

Laser: I have had a massive focus on the laser over summer. Determined to make the worlds I trained hard and I felt I improved the whole way throughout SIRS and Sail Melbourne, I trained with he rest of the New Zealand team after Christmas and brought a new boat. I felt ready for the nationals. Andrew Murdoch showed his class in the stronger wind, while I was consistently finishing in the top 3. After a solid regatta I finished 2nd equal. with only 3 spots available for worlds, the sailing was intense. Sail Auckland was our second qualifying event. I sailed well, and after a second in the medal race I managed to finish 3rd overall, After these two events I am ranked 2nd best New Zealander

I have achieved everything I set out to achieve this summer, 

Mission successful....

So now the big build up begins, again...

With just over 6 month until the next World Championships my preparation has just began. I have got 3 weeks until I head over to compete in two European Regattas, Palma and Hyeres. In the next 3 weeks I will be trying to spend as much time in the boat. I will be trying to get as comfortable as I can in the boat, working mainly on boat handling and speed. 

On 23 March I head over to Europe. At these to big European regattas, I want to continue to work on controlling the start and nailing the first beat. These two regattas will also be a good chance to re-assess and work out what needs to happen in the following months leading up to the world championships.

I will then return home in early May to put in the hard yards back at Worser Bay. I will spend a little over 2 months in Wellington before I head back over to England. In early August we will have a training camp in Hayling Island (which is where the worlds are to be held). We then head down to Weymouth (which is where the Olympics are to be held) we will have a week training there before we compete in Sail For Gold (also sailed out of Weymouth) after which we head back across to Hayling island for pre worlds training, before the Laser Men's World Championships start in early September. 

Keep an eye on the 'updates' and 'comments' sections to see how I get on.

Key Dates to watch out for:

27 March-2nd April, Princess Sofia Regatta, Spain, fleet racing
23rd-30th April, Hyeres, France, fleet racing
9th-14th August, Weymouth, fleet racing
27th Aught-5th September,  World Laser Championships, Hayling Island, fleet racing
 

Two very successful Wellington teams.

The pressure was on to defend our title in this event. We won it last year, and we wanted to do the same this year. Not only did we want to win we wanted to go through undefeated. We did so through out the two round robins, only to drop one in the final due to a silly mistake, but a win is a win, so we are happy with that. Our ranking should now climb back into the top 40, which will be good. 

Light winds again.

Josh Porebski brought up a young group of sailors who also had a fantastic regatta. Josh and his team finished a creditable 4th, which is fantastic. We all had a great time staying on boats, hopefully it will become common to have more than one Wellington team at each event.

We would like to say a big thanks to the Royal Port Nicholson Yacht Club Youth Scheme for supporting us all at this event.

Happy Days. :) 

The boys showing of their skills.

After the challenges of the laser, I moved across to the excitement of Match Racing. Right from the get go, it was exciting. Sail Auckland finished late on Sunday. Hardy Cup was the first Match racing event we were competing in, and that started early Monday morning.

I was up at 3am for a 6am flight to Sydney, with weary eyes, I made my way to the airport, checked in and made my way onto the plane. This was not the difficult part, the hard part was going to be getting from the airport to the yacht club, I arrived at 7:30am along with 5 other planes, and had to be at the yacht club by 9am. I stood in line with about a million other people, all trying to make their way though customs, I made it though there and was sitting with all my gear in a hot 30degree train. After a bit of running, a ferry trip, fence jumping and more running, I made it at 9:10am. Thank god we weren't sailing first because all the boats were on the water by the time I had arrived there!

Super close racing, Evan in foreground, us in background.

Luckily Chris and Tim had already made it there the day before and were on form, as per usual I struggled with my pre starts, but as the regatta went on and on we improved. Jordan Reece and his family did a great job of looking after us, and we made the semi finals, we were on form and sailed an awesome semi final against Adrian Short, winning both races by a couple of minutes.

The stage was set for an epic final against previous winner Evan Walker and his team including Kyle Langford who is sailing on the world tour with Torvar Mirsky. The wind had increased and we had lost our speed edge, but we were sailing well, we won every pre start, two of the starts we had him more than 5 boat lengths behind us, but he would keep it close and always attack on the down winds where we were struggling to put the boat it the right place.

In the first race we had a 10 boat length lead going into the last down, but he go a big gust and just over took us on the finish, in the 2nd race we won reasonably convincingly, then 3 race brought a lot of excitement with huge luffing duels. Unfortunately our tiller extension broke, effectively ending our race. the score was now 2-1 to Evan. Again in the final race we were leading, but gained a penalty right on the finish giving the win and the regatta to Evan.

Protest flags flying in the final race.

We would like to thank Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron for having us at Hardy Cup, we would also like to thank the Reece family for looking after us, Thanks again to the Royal Port Nicholson Yacht Club and the Youth Scheme who continue to support us to compete in these events.

Cheers JJ

Big roll tacks in light winds.

Sitting with all your weight pressed through your shins onto the leeward rail, just trying to gain that little bit of leeward heel which may help to keep the sail full. Your eyes scanning the glassy horizon, looking for any patch of wind, pissed off that half the fleet has picked up breeze on the other side of the course and are starting to sail around you. Secretly your hoping that fortunes may change! Deep down you know you are stuffed.

Sail Auckland was a regatta where keeping your emotions under control and being patient would help you. With an average wind speed of just 4 knots throughout the whole regatta, and not once using my hiking straps, I sailed ok throughout the whole regatta, just holding onto 4th going into the medal race. I had to maintain this position to secure my spot for the World Championships. 

The medal race is worth double points, and only the top 10 sailors sail in it. the breeze was the most consistent it had been all regatta, it was going to be a great race. I had a stunner, gaining positions throughout the whole race to finish 2nd, this meant I finished 3rd overall in Sail Auckland.

Launching is always a challenge a Kohimarama.

Originally only 3 spots where to be given to New Zealanders to compete in the Men's Laser World Championships to be held in Hayling Island, late in August. The two selection events were Nationals and Sail Auckland. Your 2 final scores would be added together. So I got 3rd in the laser nationals and 3rd in Sail Auckland, that means I had 6 points.

1.   Andrew Murdoch       1 + 1 = 2
2.   Josh Junior              3 + 3 = 6
3.   Andy Maloney           5 + 2 = 7
4.   Michael Bullot           2 + 6 = 8
5.   Sam Meech               4 + 5 = 9

And so on...... Since then we have been told that we have 8 spots, so pretty much everyone who wanted to go, can go.

Josh Junior, Ranked #2
Meeeaaaaan.

P.S. hope you all saw the beach training video we made, so funny. :) 

Awesome downwind sailing conditions.

The 2010 Laser Nationals was a regatta I thought I had a good chance of winning! Andrew Murdoch showed that he was still the best, out classing everyone. How does he do this? He controls the start, he's fast and he makes almost no mistakes. 

We had a couple of light races throughout the regatta, but for the most part we had a good 18 knots of breeze, one day we had a southerly front come though, that produced big waves and strong winds, the race officials had troubles laying the committee boat and all the marks, so racing was called of for the day, James and I went Cougar hunting. Because of this we had a marathon day the next day. We sailed 5 races in strong wind, as the day went on, Andrew showed superior fitness and strength, while the rest of us were left battling it out with very close racing.

After getting chased out of a super market by cougars, and after 10 races sailing against some of the best sailors in the world, I found myself lying in 3rd place, tied for second. 

Awesome.

Sailing back into Whangamata Habour after a great sail.

I took my laser with me up to the Coramandel, we went up there for a holiday, dad thought it was boot camp, he seemed to be on a mission to get Heleen and I fitter. He would take us on bike-runs, where he rides his bike and we have to run! not so fear.

I even spent a bit of time sailing out off Whangamata harbour which was a bit of fun. I wasn't the only one training out of there, Marcus Hansen was also up there.

I then left for Tauranga, where I picked up my new boat, (she's fast). A few days later we had a training camp where most of New Zealand's top laser sailors came together, Andrew Murdoch, Michael Bullot, Sam Meech, Andy Maloney and Max Andrews were all there.

We spent 3 days training outside the harbour, in stunning 7-14 knots of breeze, and 2 days inside the harbour in a bit more breeze. Everyone was so even, with very little separating us, its shaping up to be a nationals where any one of about 8 of us could win it.

Exciting times.