So it's all over now and fellow brit and HISC sailor Simon Payne is the new world champion, which is great news. Amac came second with 5 race wins out of 14 races, which I think is amazing.

Saturday was a better day for me with my best race being a 16th. I did actually get to the windward mark in that race in the top ten, but having to find somewhere to tack onto starboard and actually get round the mark cleanly was a bit of a problem and I dropped back a bit.

Going into Sunday I was in 23rd place overall, with 2 races left and a chance at catching Alex Buerger (the leading junior) if I sailed well. We had slightly more breeze on Sunday, and I found I was struggling for upwind speed, so had two average results. Glenn on the other hand revelled in the extra wind and scored a 14 and a 17, jumping up 2 places overall and pushing me down to 24th.

To summarise the event for me, it has been a massive learning experience and I have improved my sailing dramatically. If you look at the standard of the top 15 guys here it is extrememely high, so I should be happy with 24th overall. Secretly my goal was to be top twenty, and I think the problems I had with the boat in the first two days put paid to that. Alex sailed really well to come 20th, and I never managed to beat him in a race even though we were often together on the race course. So realistically I think the highest I could have had with a clean regatta was 21st, as usual I change too much before the event began (new sail) and spent a while getting back up to speed.

Thanks to everyone involved in the event, it was fantastic fun, and thanks to my very supportive wife Freddy who has been at home with 2 small children for 2 weeks on her own. Time to go and pack the boat in the box now and catch the plane back to reality.

Tim