It seems I may have jinxed Paul Brotherton and Mari Shepherd in the last Roll Tacks by suggesting that - following their victory in the warm-up 29er Nationals at Hayling - they would also go on to win the 29er Worlds in Weymouth. For the first half of the week they were well in the frame, and after qualification for the Gold Fleet finals they shared the lead with young Finnish helmswoman Silja Lehtinen and her Australian crew Scott Babbage. Then the breeze picked up for the last few days, and while the Finnish/Aussie combo did a horizon job, Brotherton and Shepherd dropped down the rankings to finish a distant 10th. "I suppose if you're going 20 per cent faster in the light winds, then you can't expect to be fast in a breeze," shrugged Brotherton afterwards, who by sailing with the svelte 52kg Shepherd had put all his eggs in one basket, hoping for a week of soft breezes.

Such was Brotherton's lack of speed in the stronger winds that on the last day he even resorted to putting his (slightly) larger frame on the trapeze and helming from the wire. It didn't make an awful lot of difference to the final outcome but it was an innovative attempt at getting back on level terms with the heavier teams. He isn't the first to try this, however. Way back in the 1950s the legendary four-time Olympic Champion Paul Elvstrom helmed from the wire to win the 505 World Championships, sailing with a novice crew that he had picked up from the beach. Heroic though this was, it's hard to imagine anyone getting away with this in the modern era, not in the 505 or any other high-performance class. Both helm and crew really have to be at the top of their game to succeed at the top level.

Nowhere is this more true than in a skiff class like the 29er where the helm needs lightning-fast reactions while the crew needs good balance and agility combined with excellent feel for the boatspeed, as it's the crew that usually controls the mainsheet. Lehtinen and her heavierweight crew Babbage sailed smart in the light and fast in the breeze. And so for the second year running a female skipper and male crew combination have won the 29er Worlds, following Aussie team Jacqui Bonnitcha and Euan McNicol's victory in San Francisco last year. Best of the Brits were Dylan Fletcher and Rob Partridge in second place overall.

Running concurrently with the 29er Worlds in Weymouth was the 49er European Championships, with Stevie Morrison and Ben Rhodes finally taking their first major victory in the Olympic skiff after having threatened to do so for two or three years now. The win was especially sweet for these two after they were robbed of victory in last year's Europeans in Denmark, when an experimental winner-takes-all system on the final day saw them knocked down from a clear lead throughout the regatta to finish just 7th overall. On that occasion Chris Draper and Simon Hiscocks stepped up to take the event, although in victory Draper was very generous to his compatriots, saying that they deserved to be the real winners of the event. He also took a pop at the severe knock-out system employed in that regatta, one of a number of experiments trialled in Olympic classes before ISAF settled on the eventual system of the Medal Race.

 

While sailors are still not entirely comfortable with the Medal Race, they are resigned to the idea of it being here to stay and they understand the reasons why it has been put there. In the 49er Europeans the 10-boat final race added a frisson of excitement to the end of the regatta without overly affecting the final outcome. Morrison and Rhodes had a race on their hands against the Hansen brothers from Denmark, but held their nerve to win the regatta. In the last Roll Tacks I mentioned the importance of this duo needing to better their big rivals for Olympic selection, Draper and Hiscocks, if they were to merit consideration for China two years from now. Well now they have done that, and they have one major regatta remaining this year - the Olympic test regatta in Qingdao - to see if they can repeat the feat. Morrison and Rhodes are the only team on the 49er circuit to have won a medal at every ISAF Grade 1 event, and it would be a remarkable achievement if they can maintain that form through to the end of the season.

Draper and Hiscocks were next Brits in 4th overall, a good result by nearly anyone's standards except their own. However, considering they had been lying in 16th overall just two days earlier after a disastrous beginning to their Gold Fleet finals racing, 4th was a remarkable achievement. In the 25-boat fleet, they finished last in one race, 9thth in the next - only for this later to be converted to a DSQ following a protest by an up-and-coming Dutch team, Jeroen van Catz and Wilco Stavenuiter. Having won the British Nationals a week earlier at Hayling, this was the Dutch team's first taste of a Gold Fleet finals in the 49er.

Draper and Hiscocks were coming into the windward mark from the port side of the course, the Dutch approaching with rights from starboard. The Brits were looking to dip the stern of the Dutch boat until they realised that the Dutch sails had been obscuring a cruising yacht moored smack bang on the starboard layline to the windward mark! Draper couldn't duck the Dutch without smashing into the moored yacht so he crash-tacked the boat as a last resort. The Dutch weren't overly inconvenienced by the British manoeuvre but they protested anyway. Fair enough, they were within their rights to do so. But rather than leaving it there - with the protest won - they told Draper and Hiscocks afterwards that they had protested because they felt that the British team was trying to take advantage of them being the new boys in the Gold Fleet, that they thought the Brits were using a bit of intimidation to muscle their way through the fleet.

Oooh! That comment really got the goat of the reigning World Champions, particularly Hiscocks. Some of what he said to me was unrepeatable but the gist of it was: "That was really rude. Anyone who knows us, knows that is not what we're about, we're about helping people in the class." And it's true. Draper and Hiscocks are widely respected for being free and open with sharing their knowledge. They are not ones for lording it over crews less successful than themselves, so the Dutch misinterpretation of their motives really struck a nerve. Good evidence of the British team's open and friendly approach can be found in their newly-launched website at www.teamdraperandhiscocks.com. Go have a look for yourself. If you're into any form of skiff or trapeze sailing you'll find some really good stuff under the ‘Tips and Advice' section.

I'm sure I've mentioned this many times before - but don't be afraid of going up to top sailors and asking them for help. I particularly remember being star-struck in my younger years and not daring to go up to the top sailors and ask them for advice. If that's you, then summon up the courage to go and talk to them, as more often than not they'll be happy to oblige - provided of course they're not just about to go out and race the final heat of the World Championships! Catch them at the right moment and most top sailors enjoy sharing knowledge with others. They are normal people just like the rest of us. Well, most of them anyway...

It was refreshing to hear Stevie Morrison admit how nervous he had been during that final Medal Race on his way to Europeans victory. There are certainly some ice-cool characters out there but equally there are some normal human beings who have the same fears and foibles as the rest of us. They've just worked harder than most to get to their exalted positions at the top of the pecking order.

It has been a phenomenal few weeks for British sailing, what with Paul Goodison winning the Laser Europeans, Hannah Mills and Peggy Webster winning the Women's 420 Worlds, Simon Payne taking the International Moth Worlds off Aussie poster boy Rohan Veal, and Mark Upton-Brown and Ian Mitchell reclaiming the 505 World Championship title which they last held in 1997.

Congratulations to Upton-Brown and Mitchell who have broken a nine-year drought of British success in the 505 class. To my knowledge they have not done much Five-Oh racing since winning in Denmark 1997, as Upton-Brown has been International 14 sailing and Mitchell steering an RS700 for the past few years. They bought a boat for a late run at the Worlds and they must have exceeded even their own expectations. It certainly wasn't easy, as Americans Howie Hamlin and Jeff Nelson pushed them all the way. Chris Thorne's race reports on the official regatta website were excellent. Here is an excerpt from the deciding final race, just as the fleet rounds the first windward mark in a fluky, light-wind affair.

"Hamlin and Nelson must have feared for the worst when rounding in 21st place. But where were Upton-Brown and Mitchell? Back in the 40s, that's where. If the Americans could pull back through into the top three they could still clinch the title. The left shift makes the run to leeward one sided, with limited overtaking opportunities. However the contenders stick to their task. The pressure starts to build further from the left. The British pair spot this and sail into the header, and triumphantly tack back onto port tack, clearing much of the fleet and, most importantly for them, climbing through Hamlin and Nelson in the process. By the second windward mark they have gained an extraordinary 37 spaces into sixth place. Hamlin and Nelson have done well but are back in eleventh.

"Apart from a brief challenge from the Swedes, Magnus Nilsson and Andreas Carlsonn, Sophie Soellner and Wolfgang Stuckl are reigning supreme at the front. A measure of their achievement is that the places behind them are changing like the numbers out of a lottery machine. The wind is still well left on the reaching legs, making the first a two-sailer and the second broad enough to require a second or third gybe as the wind was becoming more convincing, gusting at over 12 knots. By the end of the third upwind leg, it is the Germans, then the Swedes, then Upton-Brown and Mitchell and, to keep the tension wound up in this tightest of contests, Hamlin and Nelson.

"All the Americans can do now is to get back in front of Upton-Brown and Mitchell, finish in the top three and then hope that the Britons make mistake that drops them to sixth place or lower. On the final beat they achieve the only part in their control, squeezing into second place on the last leg. However, the British pair hold onto third spot, enough to secure the title by two points."

If you want to read more you can find it at www.505worlds2006.com, an excellent example of what a regatta website should be like. In a fleet of 112 boats, Upton-Brown and Mitchell's score card is truly impressive. They may not have won a race, but they counted all their results in the top four and discarded a sixth. When you're hot, you're hot.