Road to Beijing

Just a quick note to say you can hear us on BBC 5 live tonight on the 'Road to Beijing' program from 8.

Last week at home

So we've been back for a week now. It's been great. We've both had a chance to get some space and relax, something thats going to be quite hard to do in a weeks time!
The weathers been great so I've been out on my bike everyday enjoying it and topped it off with a camping trip to the Northern beaches of Devon.
We set off for Bejing on Tuesday morning, travelling out with fellow Devonian Joe Glanfield. We go straight to Qingdao with the aim of sailing our kit round from our training marina to the Olympic venue before heading off to Shanghai for a holding camp.

Last day

Our final training camp in Qingdao finishes today. We have just enough time to go for one more training session this morning before we have to pack the boats away ready to go into the Olympic marina.

The last few days have been good. We lost one day to no wind but the final day of racing saw us starting to find some good pace and has left us in confident spirits on our kit decisions.
Yesterday, for the first day since we've been here the wind really thumped in bringing with it a large sea. It made for some fun sailing especially seeing some of our rivals struggling to keep control.
Contrary to what most of the media is saying, the weed problem although better is still far from fixed. At points in the racing our tactics were completely governed by weed avoidance. It would be a real issue if this is still the case during the Olympics. Having said that full credit to the Chinese who are definately doing everything possible to prevent that being the case.

We're home for about a week before flying back out here. The time at home will be spent resting and preparing mentally. It's been a good training camp and especially nice to be staying somewhere different. (This week we've been in a local apartment but when we get back we will be in team accomodation). We've kept ourselves busy even when the wind hasn't played ball. Stevie's been engrossed in the Spooks box set whilst I've been following the text updates on the Tour De France. Truly inspiring reading about British success. Nice one Cav!

Foggy

Still going well out here although the fog has once again slowed up proceedings. The Danish team organised a mini regatta to be run yesterday and today. We had good conditions yesterday and did 4 races as well as an hour of tuning. Racing went ok though we definitely weren't as sharp as we'd like to be. I think its down to our minds being focused on tuning and gear selection and not on the racing.
We went down today but the fog rolled in and visibility dropped to around 50m plus there was no wind so racing was abandoned. There was a funny 'lost in translation' moment which caused quite a bit of panic though. Word got round that the Chinese were not going to let us launch or sail on the Olympic waters from today onwards! So as you can imagine the whole team started worrying about training and phone calls and emails were flying around trying to find out why. As it turns out what the Chinese were tying to say is that they didn't recommend us sailing today because of the fog warning!
The plan now is to re-run the racing missed today tomorrow.

In the meantime we have managed to come to some more decisions over kit so far from a wasted day.

Feeling proud!!

We've spent the last few days testing sails and masts trying to decide on a suit for the Games. It's been pretty exciting to have a Union Jack flying in front of the boat ( a first for both of us). Its been very light but sailable and we seem to be making progress.
Some of the other nations are organising a mini regatta starting tomorrow for the 49ers. I think we might go and join in, see how we're matching up.

Little Miss Pipedream

Having spent the last few days working hard to get her ready for her premier launch, we rode down to the club in torrential rain. Not the sort of conditions we would have liked to launch her.
Anyway sure enough by the time we were ready to push off the clouds parted and the rain stopped. As most of you know we always name our boats after girls in songs and so with a can of TsingTsao Beer we named her 'Little Miss Pipedream' (A song by the Wombats).
The breeze held up for the duration of our sail and she seemed to be pretty good. Big thanks to Simon Hiscocks for helping prepare her back in the UK.
We now have a week of practise in her to make sure she is the one but things look promising.

First days in China

Hi folks,
Just got to China yesterday. We're here for two weeks training with our training partners John Pink and Rick Peacock. The days prior to our arrival have been pretty wet or so the rest of the team’s training out here have told us. It sounds like we have got pretty lucky so far as although the wind has been light its stayed dry and been about as comfortable as it gets here!
For the first few days our time will mainly be spent working on the new boat preparing her for her premier launch. We've been re-doing the slot gaskets on the hull and rudder stock so we're crossing fingers that they go off and finish well.
As many of you might have heard there is a major problem with seaweed over here. On the way from the airport we saw that the Chinese have closed off a lane on the highway so the weed lorries can get through. When we got to the coast the operation we can see is just massive! There are fishing boats as far as the eye can see (which isn't very far admittedly given the visibility!) all hauling nets pulling out the weed. This is then being brought ashore and taken away in the lorries. They also have the army involved moving the stuff by hand. (See pic).
We got on the water today and it was pretty good. The weed wasn't too big an issue, just a few calculated swerves needed to avoid the worst of it and the wind was around 8kts.
Hopefully launch the new boat in a couple of days given good fortune and wind.

Kiel Week

After our slow start to the year we decided to drop a tip to China from our program to make way for more racing. The event that took the place was last week in Kiel, North Germany. Although a Grade 1 ranked event we haven't been to Kiel for a number of years because it's clashed with World or European Championships. Its an odd event because its run during Kiel Festival and its kind of like doing a 49er event in the middle of Cowes week. A bit hectic!!!
It didn't start all that well for us as upon landing we found out our apartment had been booked out to another team leaving us with the coaches floor for the night. We managed to sort things the next day and ended up staying in an attic flat with an old lady! The flat can only be described as dated but it was seriously cheap. We had a few amusing run ins with the old lady throughout the week as she lost count of the date and tried to get extra rent out of us! Though I'm not so sure she wasn't just play acting!

Having sent all our good kit to China we were a little sure as to how the week would play out, but we were pleasantly surprised when we seemed to be on the pace despite old kit.
During the racing we had moments when we sailed great and hence won quite a few races. Unfortunately we also had moments where we ballsed it up!

On the whole we learn't a lot about focusing on the right attitude to certain racing situations and by the end of the week felt we had the mistakes more under control.

IOC Regulations

Hi everyone,
I guess you're probably wondering why we have two blogs running? Basically the IOC (International Olympic Committee) don't allow any form of advertising or branding during the Games period. So our regular website breaks these regulations, because of the association with our sponsors, the branded photos of the boat etc...
Because of this we thought it easier to have this blog running alongside for the duration of the Games. Hopefully you'll be able to follow our progress on here.

We have recently joined the Lenovo summer games blogger program, which is a scheme designed to get the voices of the athletes competing out to the world without having to go through the media. http://summergames.lenovo.com/