You've heard the expression, a ‘pea-souper'. For when it's so foggy you can barely see past the end of your nose. It's an expression that might crop up with worrying frequency during the TV commentary on the Olympic Regatta in Qingdao a few weeks from now. In fact the Olympic Regatta might prove to be the perfect sport for radio, because quite apart from a lack of wind and an excess of current, there is also the problem of fog in Qingdao. So start getting used to the idea of hearing ‘pea-souper' on the TV commentary, except that the commentators might have to reserve that term not for the air, but for the water.

As if we didn't have enough doubts and worries about the suitability of Qingdao as a sailing venue already, along comes the most almighty armada of weed. It's been bad enough racing around Chichester Harbour lately, having to stop and clear weed off the foils once every 10 minutes. The Olympic sailors, on the other hand, may not have to worry about stopping to remove weed, because it's been so thick in Qingdao recently that they might struggled to get going in the first place!

Of course, if there's one nation that can be relied on to bend Mother Nature to its will, it's China. The organisers have put a small army - no, make that a large navy - to work on the problem. Some estimates suggest that as many as 20,000 people have either volunteered or been ordered to help with the clean-up operation, working on up to a thousand boats to scoop the algae out of the water.

One member of the Qingdao Olympic Sailing Committee has said the government would try to block algae from drifting into the sailing area by installing a fenced perimeter more than 30 miles long. But in case the organisers' best efforts don't work out, competing sailors would be well advised to take a machete with them to help clear their own path around the Olympic course.

The 1988 Olympic Regatta took place not so very far from Qingdao, in the Korean waters of Pusan. That was also predicted to be a light wind event, although in the end the regatta turned out to be predominantly a very windy and wavy affair. I remember reading about the USA 470 women's team see their chance of gold slip away in the final race when their boat leapt off a wave and for the rig tension hook to jump off the jib halyard wire as the boat crash landed into the front of the next wave. With the jib now flailing around in the wind, crew Lynn Jewell battled to get the wire located back onto the hook before she and skipper Alison Jolly could pull the rig tension back on and get going again. Somehow Jewell managed the impossible, and the Americans got the jib back under control, got sailing fast, and still won the gold medal.

Canadian sailor Larry Lemieux had a medal in his sights at Pusan in the Finn class. He was battling away in one race, with the wind gusting close to 35 knots, when he spotted a 470 in trouble, with one sailor hanging on to the capsized boat while the other was being swept further away.

"The first rule of sailing is, you see someone in trouble, you help him," reasoned Lemieux afterwards, having abandoned his own quest for a medal to come to the aid of the two Singaporean sailors. He was subsequently awarded the Pierre de Coubertin medal for his selfless actions. Let's hope that no competitor is required to perform this kind of heroics in Qingdao, but let's hope that we do at least see some kind of heroics.

The conditions in Qingdao hardly seem to lend themselves to acts of heroism. But heroism comes in many different forms, and I'm sure with medals at stake we will still get some enjoyment from watching the Olympic Regatta. It would be wonderful if, after all the doubt about the venue, Qingdao were to do a ‘Pusan' and come over all breezy just when it mattered most.

International 14

There was a couple of remarkable stories from International 14 Prince of Wales Week recently in Weymouth. On day one, Ian Pinnell and Ian Mitchell, who won Prince of Wales Week last year at Cowes, won the first two races and came third in the third. They were leading the week, after having done very little - if any - practice going into the regatta. The boat has remained virtually untouched since last year, but they were fast and they looked good. Although they do look a little unorthodox at times.

Crewing for Mike Lennon in Weymouth, I remember following the two Ians into one gybe mark and seeing skipper Ian (Pinnell) facing backwards through the gybe. If you don't sail high performance boats, let me tell you that this is highly irregular behaviour, to put it mildly. What he does with the mainsheet through the manoeuvre, I have no idea, but Nelly seems to make it work. Nelly did his formative years racing in the Enterprise, one of the few remaining transom sheeted classes, and it seems old habits die hard. Front hand Ian (Mitchell) says he resolutely faces forwards through every manoeuvre - as he should do. The added bonus is that he doesn't have to see the balletic carnage going on in the back of the boat. I have to admit, pretty it may not be, but Nelly still manages to make it effective.

Forward-facing Ian says he did manage to convince aft-facing Ian to do a couple of weekends practice leading up to last year's victory at Cowes, and felt they were getting somewhere, overwriting the old habits with some new ones. But come the first gun of the first race, aft-facing Ian came roaring back like he had never been away. And at this stage of Nelly's career, they are probably here to stay. As I said, old habits die hard.

One of the strangest things I have seen is my old friend from Laser days, Andy Oddie, who steered the Laser with this left-hand all the way round the course. It didn't matter which tack he was on, the tiller extension stayed in his left hand. Fine if he was on starboard tack, but decidedly odd and dare I say, cackhanded, on port tack. Again, fine for me to cast such judgements, but the fact was he was one of the most talented sailors in a very talented generation. Oddie finished 7th in the 1995 Olympic Trials at Weymouth, with the likes of Hugh Styles, Bart Simpson, Iain Percy and the 18-year-old Ben Ainslie finishing ahead of him. The difference was they had done months of hard yards training out of Weymouth and Stokes Bay whereas Oddie had done next to none. Very talented, but maybe that was as far as his left-handed tiller technique would carry him, and Oddie wisely decided to retire from Olympic sailing, aged 22.

Oddie blamed his one-handed steering on his days in the Mirror, another aft-sheeted boat that has recently switched over to central sheeting. What is it about transom sheeting that encourages such strange behaviour? I remember Bryan Willis, the famous rules guru and America's Cup chairman of the jury, telling how he and his crew practised the art of hiking the wrong way round in the Enterprise. They rotated their bodies 180 degrees from the traditional method of hiking (if you now have a picture of Bryan clutching the toe straps with clenched teeth, you've rotated him through the wrong plane. Put him back to the normal position and start again. Now rotate Bryan by rolling his body over so that he is facing the water with the backs of his ankles as the connection point with the toestraps) because Bryan had a theory that by facing outwards they would have a better view of the course to windward. This might have been true, but at what price to personal pride and dignity? Never mind the pain that they must have endured to maintain this position. Needless to say, this is one trend that never caught on.

Anyway, back to this year's POW, and Nelly's aft-facing tendencies seemed to be working well as he led the week all the way through to the final day. However in the end, the superb heavy-weather skills of Andy and Tom Partington came to the fore, with the father and son team winning the week by a single point from the Ians. I won't dwell too much on the week that Mike and I endured, other than to say it was rudder trouble. After a week like the one that we had, it becomes easier to appreciate the dubious charms of a National Championship that are decided by a single race.

Yes, the Partingtons may have won the week, but the 14 National Champions are Alister Richardson and Dan Johnson. Theirs is an incredible story, with Alister having worked all the previous night without sleep alongside boatbuilder Richard Woof to have the new yellow Woof 1 design ready for battle. If the race hadn't been postponed for 45 minutes, they probably wouldn't have made it. Come the start gun, however, the yellow boat was one of six or seven boats to launch off the line into clear air. We went three-quarters left and tacked back towards the windward mark. The Partingtons banged hard right and ploughed a lonely furrow on their own. Alister and Dan went hard left and led a gaggle of boats in from the layline. The yellow boat rounded first, the Partingtons second, and ourselves in third. Those would remain the positions for the remainder of the race, and two hours later, a yellow boat whose paint was still wet the previous day had now taken Alister and Dan to POW victory. Nowhere in the text books will you find any suggestion that this is the way to win a championship, but win it they did. Congratulations to the sailors, and to the boatbuilder in particular.

Mike and I can say that we were third in the National Championships. Did it feel like that? Not after the week of rudder breakages that we endured. I'm not a big fan of one-day championships, but maybe that's because I've won the Week but never the Day. And on this particular occasion, I was quite grateful that all our rudder had to do was hold together for a single day.