Final Day UK Nats

Hi All.
Sitting in an internet cafe in Tokyo as I write this, the final blog. We have just said goodbye to Rob, Kazyuo and Leonard as they continue on with their journey catching up with friends and family in Japan and then onto the Japanese Nationals while we head for home, we have a 10 hour stopover here before flying out to Auckland. I am pretty sure I speak for all us when I say we are looking forward to getting home.

Everything was quite rushed at the end of Racing on Day 4, unlike most regattas that finish earlier on the last day the last warning signal was not until 3.45pm which they went right up to, with the prizegiving at 7pm. Our drama was we had to leave by 8.30pm that night to drive to Heathrow (6 hours) to catch our plane to Frankfurt then Tokyo. As soons as racing was finished we had to return the charter boats, race back to the apartment pack the cars, throw sailing gear in the dryer and get back to prizegiving, we didn't end up leaving until 8.45pm so quite a quick trip with Mark leading the charge and Rob right up his tail. So unfortunately there has been no time to blog until now, fortunately the facebook updates have been real time and taken some of the pressure off.

Well our boys have made us all so proud, all finishing in the top 5. We have been inundated with messages of congratulations from you all so from everyone here thank you so much.

Final results were Leonard 1st, Markus 3rd, and Isaac 5th.

For the previous days sailing we had seen a typical sea breeze come in and blow from the South West, Race Day 4 was somewhat different we had a shifty flukey offshore breeze, varying from 3 knots to 10 knots during the day. During the guys speed tests before racing they were noticing massive changes in wind direction and this remained constant for the day making it difficult to return consistent results.

Three races were sailed for the day, which gave a total of 12 sailed all together.

Clink on the link to see overall results. www.kbsuk.com/data/optimistiocaevents/data/results/2011natsengoldnh.html

I think the trip has been a great success, the boys have experienced some great highs and some lows along the way to go with them, they have dealt with both situations really well. They have experienced sailing under pressure with the need to perform to maintain and hopefully improve their position and had lots of starting practice. They have learnt heaps and hopefully they will be able to take this learning with them through to the Worlds at the end of the year.
Well time to sign off, thank you all for taking the time to follow the boys and we wish Leonard well in Japan.

A few snapshots from the last day.

The boys about to leave the beach for the last time.

The boys off doing some fine tuning between races, Markus on helm, Max on mainsheet and Leonard the tactician, oh and I nearly forgot the big boy (Rob) hot on their heels.

The boys with their well earned hardware, also Bleddyn (coach) and Max (Honarary Kiwi from Dominican Republic)