Jackie Gay

12-15 October 2006 - Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy

Our first big test… After an agonising couple of months waiting for the new Skud 18s to arrive by container from Indonesia, and a frantic summer building, testing and learning to sail them, it was time to race. I was nervous, but excited – in training no one British boat had been clearly ahead of the others, and we knew that Gustaf, the Swede, was a top class sailor, a past World Champion in single handed classes. It was great to finally be out at a start, in a one-class race, the Skuds slicing up and down behind the line in a nice fresh breeze.

From the beginning we had a great regatta – good starts, fast speeds upwind and downwind gains. We only had one bad day when the wind was shifty, gusty and full of holes (we sailed right in to one). Overall we came second to Gustaf – a silver medal. And we improved as the regatta went on, in both proficiency and tactics, a big confidence boost. Unfortunately the racing was cancelled for all paralympic classes on the Sunday (my birthday…) because the winds were too strong, very frustrating because we are good in strong winds and were sure we could have handled it. For me this was a fantastic result, I never expected us to do so well. We won three of the races and came second in all the others apart from the wind hole experience, a consistent performance which won us a place on the Skandia Team GBR squad.