The past week has flown by at a frenetic pace, catching up with family and work, plus training and making plans for the next trip.

We fly out tomorrow to Hong Kong for a Team Camp, and then on to China, where we will settle into the Olympic Village on July 28.

Approaching the ‘business end’ of six years of Olympic preparation now, I really just want to get into the racing!

Having just returned from China on the weekend, I am back at work trying to catch up on the last few weeks’ goings-on. My diary is suspiciously free for the rest of this week, but I am sure that will not last long…
Our recent trip was pretty busy - shipping delays meant our boats were late arriving due to fog and customs clearance. When they did arrive a lot of work was done to the boat we plan to use at the Olympics – fairing and deck layout adjustments among other things to help us cope with the light wind conditions we generally experience over there. We also got some really valuable training time almost every day with George and Brian, who I mentioned in my last post.
The algae has also been brought under control by way of netting (about 30 miles) set up around the edges of the course, and of course the huge efforts of the locals out on fishing vessels and the military.
We fly out again in a week and a half for the final ‘Olympic’ trip to China…

Thick fog bringing visibility down to 40m or so, plus heaps of weed – certainly not your ideal sailing conditions…but the Chinese locals are certainly working hard to clean it up on a daily basis.

This week we have had our training partners (George Szabo and Brian Fatih from the States) over here, to sail with / against us on one of our boats. Both George and Brian are really valuable people to have here, helping us to finalise our sail choices and techniques for the course.

So when not out on the water, we are working madly on the hull of the boat we plan to use at the Olympics.

We have rented some space in a boat factory in Qingdao and have three boats here at the moment. The boat we’re likely to use at the Olympics is receiving quite a bit of TLC courtesy of two boat-builders we have brought over from Sydney - Mark and Chris. They have been a great help so far, as have the team at the factory.

It’s all systems go here!

Back in Qingdao, China for another couple of weeks of training and preparation on the Olympic course.

You could almost be forgiven for thinking I’d changed from a water-based sport and moved into track and field – the surface of the course in Qingdao is covered with some sort of green spongy algae!

You can see in this picture below, the surface almost looks like a bowling green…it certainly makes for interesting sailing!

So…back home last week from Croatia where the weather was really very unkind, as you can see in the picture here. It’s not much better here in Sydney now either to be honest!

I’m pretty much straight back into the swing of things with back to back meetings at work, and lots of catching up with my wife and daughters.

I’m only here for a week and a half before heading off to China again for a training camp – by the time I get settled, I’ll be off again!

Split Regatta

Well, Day I of racing in Croatia was very quiet, with very little wind but some thunder storms around. We towed to the race course before one aborted start and then we towed home.

Day 2 saw the race committee try twice to race without success. That leaves 2 scheduled days of racing and a reserve to get some racing in...fingers crossed!

Split is a really beautiful place…just not very windy at the moment!