Jun3Written by:craig
03/06/2009 13:15 
What a blinding start to the season. Robbie and I couldn’t have asked for a better start, two gold Medals and the Grand Prix title at one of our favourite venues, Bournemouth.
There were anticipations and apprehensions going into the first grand prix of the season; As you never know how fast your boat really is and how competitive you’re going to be until you line up for the start for the first heat. Added to that, the pace of a lot of boats has really picked up and so has the driving skills of quite a few of the teams.
The conditions were not the easiest, there was a nice swell rolling in combined with the usual Bournemouth chop so you had to try and really pick the best lines and keep the boat level to get as much drive out of the boat as you could.
All the practice that Robbie and I have put in over the winter certainly seems to have paid off we had really good starts in all our heats and managed to pick some really fast lines around the course working really well as a team in the boat. We now need to try and race as clean and well as we did at Bournemouth for the rest of the season so that we can keep the competition off our backs.
It was a shame that little Dan and Nathan in Blue sheets II didn’t have as good a start when they damaged their boat in Saturdays racing but lots of gaffa tape and they got back on it and showed improvement as the weekend progressed. Congratulations to Niall and James in Doyster Blue sheets III who won division 2 on Sunday must have been those new specs helping Niall out.
One of the highlights of the weekend was competing against 3 times national champions Wet Willy 2 it was good to have them back out to play, even if they did seem to have some engine problems, which reminds me they owe me some spark plugs as well now.
I feel I’ve changed a lot over the last few months as a racer; I would say that I am a lot more focused now and rather than blaming the boat from letting me down, I have been focusing on driving the boat the best I can and making sure that I was driving the best route I possibly could around the course.
We are so happy to be leading the championship. The whole weekend didn’t feel real! It hasn’t quite sunk in that we managed to win every race that we were in. I feel this is down to what we have learnt and the time we’ve spent preparing for this year, which has paid off for us as you can tell by how far in front of the fleet we could get.
Robbie and I would both like to congratulate the ZCR boys for hosting their first race weekend. We thought the weekend went very well and were impressed with how well organized everything was and all the effort that had been put into the evening entertainment we’re certainly looking forward to the other race events.
Bring on Watergate and let’s hope I can still keep hold of my beautiful orange bibs. (Thanks to Mick who hated the bibs when you raced back in the day).