The last day of the ISAF World Championships in Cascais was a great one for Skandia Team GBR. Stevie Morrison and Ben Rhodes won the Seiko Velatura 49er World Championships, while Christina Bassadone and Saskia Clark dominated the Medal Race to secure bronze in the Women's 470.

It wasn't quite so good in the Men's 470, but nor was it all bad news. A 2nd place in the Medal Race could only lift Nick Rogers and Joe Glanfield to 8th overall, but they had suffered a torrid week in between moments of brilliance. Last year's world champions, Nic Asher and Elliot Willis, just missed the Medal Race by finishing 11th but these guys are still young and there is plenty yet to come.

The human backstay

Nick and Joe learned a big lesson in one of the qualifying races, where the wind was blowing dogs off chains. They rounded the top mark in about third place, with the leading boats yet to dare hoisting spinnakers. The Brits went for the hoist, set the kite, then BANG - the mast snapped. The next boats all rounded without hoisting, until the Dutch brothers, Sven and Kalle Coster, went for the kite. Once successfully hoisted, mast still intact, the siblings tore through the fleet at warp speed, stole the lead by the bottom mark and won the race. The Costers went on to secure the silver medal in the 470s, so their bravery - or madness - was rewarded. In the case of Nick and Joe, it probably cost them a medal.

It might not have done had they not suffered another rare breakdown when they ripped the spinnaker and had to complete the race without it. With the discard already used up by the broken mast incident, this left the Brits with a big score round their necks. "We haven't had a broken mast or ripped spinnaker in years," said Joe afterwards, "so to get both come along in one week is pretty frustrating." However, looking back at the broken mast race, Joe believes they had two options that might have saved the day. "Either we shouldn't have flown the spinnaker at all, or I should have hooked on to the trapeze and used my body weight as a backstay."
 
Not flying the spinnaker would probably have given them a top five in the race, which would have been perfectly respectable. "We later heard the breeze was gusting up to 40 knots, so if we'd have known that, we probably would have left the kite in the bag," Joe admitted. Or the second option might well have kept the mast in the sky and the spinnaker might have powered them to victory just as it did the Kosters. It takes presence of mind to come up with radical solutions in the heat of the moment, like turning yourself into a human backstay.

Back in 1982 at the 505 World Championships in Ireland, carbon fibre rigs were just coming into fashion, before they were subsequently banned. They were very expensive and notoriously delicate, but they were fast provided you kept the rig in one piece. American crew Gary Knapp and Cam Lewis were one of a number of top teams using the carbon stick. When a big gust came down the run of one race, it ripped out several carbon masts. Knapp and Lewis's mast stayed up, they won the race and won the World Championships, all because Lewis had hooked onto his trapeze wire and anchored himself at the back of the boat. The human backstay won the day.

Port tack flyers

It was unconventional tactics that won the day for Stevie Morrison and Ben Rhodes in the 49er Worlds. The Exmouth duo said they started on port tack in 90 per cent of their races. This used to be one of my favourite tactics in the 49er, partly because I was rubbish at getting off the start line! And that indeed is one of the reasons Stevie and Ben used it too. Not that they're rubbish at getting off the line - just that everybody is so darn good at getting off the line these days that the whole fleet finds itself in pinching mode - ‘chopping wood' as it's known in the trade - for the first few minutes.

Everyone pinches and pinches up, trying to avoid the bad air of the boat to leeward while trying to burn off the boat to windward and spit him out the back door. Eventually a few boats are left standing in the front row, with the second row losers forced to tack away on to port. So now the front runners can put the bow down and get motoring. It's why winning the pin end of the start line is so crucial in high performance boats, because you've got no one to leeward of you, so you can get motoring from the moment the start gun fires and really get the foils working for you. The thing about the 49er is that the centreboard and rudder are quite small, which means they don't really start working at full efficiency until the boat is up to pace.

Meanwhile, Stevie and Ben with their port tack starting were able to duck the whole fleet, sail past the committee boat on port tack and out into clear air within seconds of the start, bow down and zooming out to the right-hand side of the course. I watched them do this in one race, where a Danish team, Peter and Soren Hansen, won the pin and was leading the fleet out to the left while the Brits ducked more than 20 transoms to get out to the right-hand layline. This took them closer to the shore, where the best breeze and wind angle seemed to just hang there up on the layline. So guess who came in first? Stevie and Ben, of course, with the Danes way back in the pack, their great start amounting to nothing.

The faster the boat, the more this extreme tactic will work for you. It works best of all in singlehanded skiffs like Contenders, RS600s, 700s and Musto Skiffs, where tacks are expensive and cost a minimum of four boatlengths when the breeze is up. Where the tactic is far less useful and that much more risky is in a slow boat that can tack on a sixpence, with minimum loss of speed. The Laser is a good example, or an Enterprise, or a sportsboat like a Laser SB3. Here, the danger is that someone will start on starboard tack but will tack right on your air just as you were hoping to duck his transom.

The other bit of the race where Stevie and Ben excelled was on some of the tricky downwind legs. There was one race where a strong seam of breeze was blowing down the middle with next-to-no-breeze on the edges of the course. The Exmouth boys put in six or seven gybes down the middle, twin-trapezing their way down the best breeze, while others sailed too far out and found themselves wallowing in the middle of the boat.

The breeze was predominantly windy for Cascais, but the Medal Race in the 49ers was a frustratingly light-wind affair, with big holes in the breeze. Stevie and Ben struggled early in the race, but climbed up to 4th to secure the world title by 17 points from a young Austrian team Nico Delle Karth and Nikolaus Resch. Even younger Aussie team Nathan Outteridge and Ben Austin crept into the medals, securing the bronze medal in only their second year in the class.

Outteridge won the ISAF Youth Worlds three times in a row, then suffered a major car crash which put him out of action for the best part of a year. When he started sailing the 49er around 18 months ago and finished 6th in a light and fluky world championship on a French lake last year, people thought it was a flash in the pan. Now that he's taken 3rd in a strong wind world championship on the sea, people are going to have to revise their view of this up and coming Australian team.

Outteridge and Austin's bronze contributed to a strong overall performance by the Australian team, which finished second to... guess who? Yes, Skandia Team GBR did it again with two golds and four bronzes, earning the President of the IOC Cup for top nation. Not only that but GBR was the only team to qualify the country in all 11 sailing disciplines for next year's Games. However, Australia, which failed to produce any medal in Athens three years ago, is coming on strong, as are other nations such as the Netherlands, France and even Brazil.

Meanwhile, the next phase of Olympic competition - and the British selection trials - is soon to take place with the Olympic Test Regatta in Qingdao in mid-August. Most notable addition to the British line-up is Ben Ainslie who hasn't raced the Finn since winning last year's Test Regatta at the Olympic venue, but who shows a remarkable ability to come right back in at the top despite prolonged absences on America's Cup duty. Ed Wright, who finished 6th in the Cascais Worlds, will be going as tune-up boat.

There is no tune-up boat going in the Yngling. Sarah Ayton's team secured the Test Regatta spot by winning gold in Cascais, while Shirley Robertson and crew will be staying in Europe. Shirley is lobbying hard to extend the trials, but Sarah remains in the driving seat for now. The same is true of Stevie and Ben in the 49er, while last year's world champions Chris Draper and Simon Hiscocks will be their tune-up boat, having only managed 9th in Cascais.

Nick and Joe will also have the benefit of last year's world champions Nic Asher and Elliot Willis as their tune-up team. No wonder the world is running scared of the Brits when we send world champions as tune-up boats. It says something of the strength in depth of the British fleet, and also of the frustration of competing on the Olympic circuit when for a Brit it's sometimes harder to get to the Games than win a medal.