What would be your perfect combination of boat and venue, and have you ever actually experienced it? I get to experience my perfect combo once every year, on the annual pilgrimage to Lake Garda in the International 14. This was the third year on the trot that I'd visited with my helmsman Martin Jones, but this time it was a case of third time unlucky.

With our boat away having had some work done to it, we only received the 14 back in time for the regatta, which on this occasion was also serving as the 14 European Championships. Because Martin and I hadn't sailed together since the Prince of Wales Cup the previous August, we were a little out of practice, to say the least. But usually we seem able to pick up where we left off quite easily. Martin - a former World Champion in the class - is a natural boathandler and so we pride ourselves on solid if not very pretty handling around the course.

In the first race, with the wind blowing 18 knots, we adopted our usual gung-ho strategy of starting on port tack and aiming for the cliffs, where there is generally better breeze on Lake Garda. Although the line was committee-boat biased and we had to duck quite a few transoms, it is a risk worth taking in the 14. Being a lightweight and short boat - which at full speed upwind is doing 11.5 to 12 knots boatspeed but which slows to a near halt after a tack - making one less tack towards the cliffs is often worth the risk of starting on port.

Our strategy worked and things were going well, as we found ourselves in 2nd place around the top mark behind another team that hadn't sailed together for some time, Andy Partington and Ben Vernieres. Up the second beat we suffered a dose of the slows as four boats piled past us, but we picked a good layline on the final beat to get back into 4th for the final run to the finish. I ran in to hoist the kite, got it filling and jumped out on the trapeze. And then - pitchpole! No sooner had we accelerated than Martin and I got flung around the front.

Martin landed on my head, which hurt! But it hurt him a fair bit more, as he was writhing around the water in agony. He didn't know if he was winded or if it was worse than that, but he reckoned that it was it for racing that day. A rescue boat had noticed our plight and soon arrived on the scene, and Martin winced as he hauled himself into the boat. I would stay with the upturned 14 until someone could come out from the shore and help me sail it back in to the yacht club at Riva.

Half an hour later, Archie Massey arrived as replacement helmsman. We got the boat upright and sailed down to the start line just in time for the start of race two. After an average start we got our act together and rounded the top mark in 5th. But then disaster as my aching limbs struggled to hoist the soggy gennaker quick enough. It flopped into the water and we sailed over it. Capsize time again, almost in exactly the same spot as with Martin earlier. By the time we'd go the boat upright again, the fleet had sailed past, and I was knackered. We went home for an early bath.

Having got back to Riva, it transpired that Martin had broken at least one - possibly two - ribs, and that was the end of our annual trip to Garda. There's not much you can do for broken ribs, except give them to heal and repair. Thankfully Lake Garda is not the worst place for your regatta to finish early, as there is plenty else to do there. Shocked and disappointed by my severe lack of capsize fitness, I went on a five-hour bike ride the following day, up in the mountains. With fellow cyclist and RS800 sailor Emma White, we got the cable car up from Malcesine and tried to find our way back home. We thought it would only take a couple of hours to get back, but it was double that! Oh well, all good training for the capsizing next time.

The nasty thing about capsizing is that it demands so much more fitness than the racing itself, certainly where trapeze boats like the 14 are concerned. This means a double punishment for incompetence: not only is a capsize catastrophic for your finishing position in a race, but it leaves you even more fatigued for any further racing, as I found to my cost. When you're on form and moving effortlessly through every manoeuvre, the fitness requirements are so much less.

Of course the way to kill two birds with one stone - getter better at sailing and get fitter at the same time - is to.... do more sailing! No great surprise there, I admit, but easier said than done when you've got a travelling job and family at home, and all the other myriad commitments of modern living. That's why one of my modern-day heroes is James "Flossie" Fawcett, who with crew Dave "Bosnia" Dobrejevic, has just won the Europeans that Martin and I so patently didn't. Having recently turned 40 and sold his share in a very successful business, Flossie is going full-tilt at a full-time campaign for the International 14 Worlds in California this September. This same team came third at the last Worlds in New Zealand, and with a brand new boat (aptly named Roaring Forties for a man clearly enjoying his midlife crisis) and the input of coach Paul Brotherton, Flossie and Bosnia are looking to go two better at Long Beach.

Judging by their performance at the Europeans, they have the measure of one continent, but there are two other mighty continents to contend with at the Worlds. Reigning champions Lindsay Irwin and Andrew Perry lead the charge from Australasia, with the Aussies a proven force in the breeze but a little suspect in the lighter conditions. And then there is a formidable campaign building up on home waters in the USA. The 2001 World Champions Zach Berkowitz and Trevor Baylis are sailing in separate boats with new team mates, former 18-foot and 505 World Champion Howie Hamlin is having a go, and wonderkid Shark Kahn (won the won Melges 24 Worlds aged 15) has put a boat on the water. You can bet the Americans are taking a very methodical approach to the process, and perhaps represent the biggest threat to the UK challenge. Then again, Rob Greenhalgh - having just won the Volvo Ocean Race aboard ABN AMRO ONE - is considering a comeback, to see if he can regain the 14 world title which he won in Japan 2003. And there are many other good contenders from the UK, so a British win is by no means out of the question.

Long Beach, the site of the Olympic Regatta in 1984, is considered to be a speed track where getting to the right-hand layline first is often the winning move. So 14 sailors around the globe are focused on improving speed from whatever areas they can find it. One of the fancy gadgets finding increasing favour among the fleet is a twist-grip control of the T-foil rudder angle via the tiller extensions. Whereas most of us control the wing angle via standard control lines led out to each side of the boat, the Aussies have been pioneering a system that means you can tweak the T-foil without having to lean in. This makes it possible to sail the boat in a much more refined way. When sailing downwind, you want the T-foil pulled on as much as you can manage without burying the bow, so with the twist grip you can tweak the foil for a flat patch and then tweak it off when you see a big wave rear its ugly head, lifting the bow just in time to scoot over the top and past the moment of danger. The Aussies have taken to using the system so much that some helms complained of repetitive strain injury in their wrists at the end of their National Championships earlier this year. But I suppose if it's quick you'll put up with the pain.

In the end though, winning championships - even in technical classes like the 14 - still comes down to good old sailing, above anything else. And let no one doubt Flossie and Bosnia's prowess in this department, as this little story will reveal. Just before going to Garda, the dynamic duo were racing Roaring Forties down at the open meeting in Beer, Dorset, and doubtless they were doing very well. They round the windward mark, Bosnia moves in to hoist the gennaker, which he does, at double speed. But the gennaker falls back to the water. The knot in the halyard has come undone. No time to waste, Bosnia shimmies up the mast, past the first spreaders, reaches up to the second set of spreaders (almost 20 feet up) to grab the tail of the halyard. All the while, Flossie is out on the trapeze, maintaining the precarious balance of the boat. Bosnia grabs the halyard. It won't move. It's stuck, still cleated back down at sea level. Doh! Flossie comes in off the trapeze, reaches into release the offending cleat and .....

Splosh! Yes, much as I'd love to tell you that Dave's feat of derring-do was all worthwhile, it ended in a drenching. But nice try, Bosnia. I hope my helmsman doesn't get any ideas for me scaling our mast, because he's not going to get that sort of service from me!