I remember being interviewed on TV by selling journalist Malcolm McKeag while I was standing on the back of a 49er in between races at the European Championships in Weymouth. Malcolm, in a RIB nearby, pointed his microphone at me and asked what skills were required for sailing the 49er. I started reeling off a list of things that I thought would make me sound suitably heroic: "fast thinking, athleticism, agility, good balance..."

If you've seen the TV clip (unfortunately it turned up on some TV bloopers show) I don't need to tell you what happened next. Splosh! The athletic, agile, well-balanced interviewee had fallen off the back of the 49er and disappeared off camera.

I was reminded of this about 30 seconds after launching my Musto Skiff onto the water for the start of the Bloody Mary. With the wind gusting and swirling viciously, I launched with half rudder and half board. Moments later, I capsized and drifted towards a committee boat moored up a pontoon. A gentleman emerged from the cabin of the committee boat, and put down his coffee to try and help fend me off. It was none other than Malcolm McKeag, fortunately without a TV camera crew!

The mast of my upturned Musto Skiff was now bumping up and down on the gravelly bottom of the reservoir. A rescue boat came along to tow me off, and after many nervous moments when I thought the mast was going to break, eventually I got free. Out of the corner of my eye, I'd seen many other single-handed trapeze boats, my colleagues in the Musto Skiffs and a number of RS600s all launch without incident. Very humiliating.

The race was now on to get past the spine that juts out into the reservoir and round to the western side of the water where the start line was situated. I managed to capsize again, this time into windward as I failed to take account of the far-reaching wind shadow of one of Queen Mary's hulking gravel dredgers.

By the time I hauled my bedraggled self across the start line, the Musto Skiffs had long gone, and I started more than four minutes late.
 
In no time flat, the International 14 of Roger Gilbert and Ben McGrane had whizzed past me. "There goes this year's winner," I thought to myself at the time, although I revised that view when I saw the speed at which the International Moths came flying past about 20 minutes later.
 
My fear that racing in the Bloody Mary in only a semi-competent state in a boat as challenging as the Musto Skiff was that I would end up in a collision with somebody else, probably down to my own lack of control. But the weird thing about starting late was that, while the other side of the reservoir always looked very busy, I seemed to spend most of the afternoon sailing around in solitary confinement.

My goal for the event had been to stay upright, something which obviously I failed to do even before the start. A brace (or is the collective term an ‘embarrassment'?) of capsizes during the race meant that even that simple goal had been too ambitious. I'd managed to stay upright at the previous weekend's Grafham Grand Prix and even did quite well on handicap, although the wind had been much more stable and predictable there. The gusts and swirls of Queen Mary were altogether more challenging, and too much for my still very limited Musto Skiff sailing skills.

For all the personal disappointments of the afternoon, it was still a beautiful day, with the breeze moderating from medium strong to light medium. It was the last 30 minutes of the race when the breeze started fizzling out that really undid an International Moth's hope of winning the event. The leading Moth sailed by Mike Cooke did a great job of finishing 10th overall, and you can't help thinking that it's only a matter of time and the right conditions before a foiling Moth wins this event.

This was the second year that Queen Mary has run the Bloody Mary using its own set of figures extrapolated from data from events of past years. On the strength of what we saw this year, the club has done a great job of balancing up the handicaps of different types of boat. The top 10 finishers ranged from the slower end such as Steve Cockerill's Graduate, through the mid-paced Fireball, Merlins and even a Laser 3000, through to the high-performance Moth and International 14.

For the second year running, the Laser got a big boost, racing off  a much more favourable handicap than the standard RYA PY number. Even then, the highest placed Laser was Matt Reid in 18th overall, showing that despite the RYA's significant and commendable adjustment of its standard PY numbers last year, there is still further work to be done.

With the pedigree of Roger Gilbert and Ben McGrane, it would be churlish to suggest that these talented sailors were anything other than worthy winners. Multiple champions across many classes, they are also reigning 14 national champions and runners-up in last year's world championship, so they are a great benchmark with which to gauge the speed of a modern International 14 with a T-foil rudder.

Then again, there were some great benchmarks finishing just behind the winners. In second place, the reigning Fireball world champions Chips Howarth and Vyv Townend, and the reigning Merlin national champion and newly crowned Endeavour Champion of Champions, Stuart Bithell crewed by Alex Jackson. In fifth place was the national championship winning team in the National 12, Graham Camm and Zoe Ballantine, and so the list continues. Congratulations, by the way, to Daniel Hollands and Andrew Thompson for finishing third in the Laser 3000. These are new names to me, but they sailed fantastically well amongst such great company.


So, with all that in mind, what to make of the fact that the International 14 moved into the lead with 20 minutes of the race still to run? For me, this is a clear indicator that the International 14 handicap needs further pegging back. We've just seen some of the best sailors in the country pitted against each other in their respective boats sailing in a moderate breeze race. This year's Bloody Mary was truly a benchmark regatta and will serve up some useful data for future editions of the Bloody Mary and possibly other regattas that want to square up their PY numbers more fairly.

Sunny side down

For all the fact that the Bloody Mary was bloody marvellous, I suspect the sailors on the other side of the world weren't missing it too much. There is the contingent of Moth sailors at their world championships in Australia, although as I write, it looks as though it's going to be a reverse of the Ashes result in the cricket, the way that Nathan Outteridge and his fellow Aussies are running away with the series.

Meanwhile in Argentina we've seen some spectacular images from local photographer Capizzano, with the 420 Worlds taking place on the brown waters of the River Plate, and the 29er Worlds being contested on some monster waves further out into the Atlantic. What a way to kick off the new year, particularly for Annabel Vose and Megan Brickwood who won the Ladies 420 World title.

Also, just before Christmas, it was the Junior 470 World Championships in Doha, Qatar. This was a particularly interesting event for the fact that it was ‘pay and play': fly out with your sailing kit and go racing in brand new, provided equipment. It can feel pretty strange racing with unfamiliar gear, particularly in a boat like the 470 which you can personalise so much to your own tastes. So it's interesting to see that it was the same old - or young - faces cropping up at the front of the fleet. The French team of Sofian Bouvet and Jeremie Mion have swept all before them in recent years at 470 junior level, and this regatta was no different. It goes to show that great sailors will always prevail, regardless of the challenge presented to them.

It poses interesting questions for the Olympic classes that are still raced on a "bring your own boat" basis. The Tornado is already going through a massive ‘one-designing' process to bring down the equipment costs in its bid to be reselected as the Olympic multihull, and maybe other classes such as the 49er and 470 will follow suit.