Congratulations to Richard Estaugh who, after 15 years of trying, has finally won a major Fireball championship, the World Championships, no less. While Richard has been the man to beat in sit-out boats like GP14s and Enterprises, a championship victory in a trapeze boat had yet eluded him.

Not that there was much trapezing going on at the Worlds, which took place on Lake Silvaplana high up in the Swiss Alps. With Rob Gardner crewing, Richard had to discard his text-book tendency to play the percentages up the middle of the course, and instead reluctantly opted for some corner banging, where more often than not the best breeze was to be found. "My normal style is to go middle left or middle right, but this was one of those places where you had to go out on a limb. I don't like getting stuck out in the corners, but that was the way it needed to be done, unfortunately.

"It was pretty tricky. If you didn't get that extra 20 yards out to the right, it made a pretty big difference. The top half of the beat got very narrow, and in the last 100 or 200 yards there was always a slight chance of a port shift coming in, which saved us a couple of times, enabling us to get round in the first five or six, rather than 25th or 26th."

Because the lake is quite small, for the first time in a Fireball World Championships the 95-boat fleet was divided into two for the first few days of qualifying, before being reorganised into gold and silver divisions for the finals. Going into the final race, Vince Horey and Andy Thompson were in first place, four points ahead of Richard and Rob. There was very little wind, and Richard had already started packing up the boat ready for the trip home, when the race committee sent the fleet afloat just two or three minutes before the cut-off for racing.

Richard was the only one who could threaten Vince for the championship, so Vince engaged in some close covering off the start line. A little too close, however, as he infringed Richard and was forced to take a 720 penalty turn. Even having escaped the clutches of his rival, Richard faced an uphill battle to win the event, needing to place in the top two with Vince outside the top six. Richard rounded the windward mark in about 6th or 7th - not good enough. Up the following beat, with the leaders going left, Richard broke right in the bid to find something different. He was rewarded with a favourable windshift and an increase in breeze, which moved him into the lead. He managed to defend the lead, and with Vince still further back down the fleet, the world title went to Richard and Rob.

Richard acknowledges that luck played a big part in his victory, although a race earlier in the week was thrown out due to a race committee error, where Richard had crossed 2nd and Vince had been in about 30th. So perhaps the luck evened out after all. Either way, congratulations to Richard who, aged 49, has just won his first trapeze championship, along with yet another GP14 National title which he scooped with Simon Potts a week or so before at a windy Mounts Bay.

Sponsorship

Securing sponsorship is the holy grail for so many sailing regattas and classes. In recent years, sailing has become increasingly successful at attracting corporate support, although mostly in the big boat arena. Skandia Cowes Week has been the most high profile example of the past decade, although with Skandia bowing out after this year, we will have to see who comes in to take their place. These days, Cowes Week is such big business, and attracts so many column inches in the national media, that I imagine Stuart Quarrie is beating off potential suitors with er, a muddy stick.

Within Cowes Week we have seen another big sailing sponsor emerge, that of Volkswagen Touareg's support of the Laser SB3 class. Every competitor was supplied with a brand new Touareg-logoed gennaker for this year's event, and with almost a hundred boats competing in the class, that is no small investment. Then there was the King of Cowes one-day regatta where Alister Richardson sailed three races in a SB3 to win a new £30,000 Touareg. It will surprise no one who knows Alister that he has ordered his Touareg in Gangsta Black with tinted windows. David Apthorp secured the runners-up prize of a VW Auris. Could possibly have been the Touareg for David were it not for an unfortunate man overboard incident in the final race, but if it's any consolation, at least the Auris should be cheaper to fill up at the garage.

Touareg's sponsorship of the SB3 is very reminiscent of Audi's support for the Laser 5000 and 4000 classes a decade ago. I was lucky enough to be competing in the 5000 in its heyday, against the likes of the Budgen brothers, the Greenhalgh brothers, the Richards brothers, the Rushalls, Tracey Covell and Steve Mitchell, Paul Brotherton and Tim Hancock, to name a few. I believe Audi's input was to the tune of about £100,000 a year, most of which went towards covering TV production costs by Andrew Preece Productions. The European circuit was then televised on Sky Sports.

Having the TV coverage created an environment where it was quite possible to go out and secure personal campaign sponsorship. Andy and Ian Budgen were the master salesmen of the era, securing a deal from Chemring PLC that was sufficiently generous to put them into full-time sailing, paying them a small wage as well as more than covering all their campaign costs. I don't think anyone else managed quite that kind of deal - or indeed the results that the Budgens achieved on the water - but a good deal of us certainly managed to cover our sailing costs. Free sailing. It's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

My crew Steve Kyffin secured a deal with Seiko Watches which put some nice timepieces on our wrists (too good to sail with, of course), and gave us enough pocket money to visit nice places like Lake Garda and Montpellier. The racing was fantastic, close, tactical, and all the more entertaining when you've been wired for sound. It's amazing how soon you forget that there is a radio microphone just below your chin, beaming every expletive deleted to a TV rib just 50 yards away. It's quite an insight into what nasty language one is capable of in the heat of battle. And quite embarrassing when you hear it booming from your television set some weeks later! The TV coverage definitely added some spice to the racing, and no matter what nasty things have been said about the 5-Tonner over the years, the Laser 5000 has certainly given me some of my happiest memories to date.

Big sponsorship deals have come the way of youth sailing, thanks to Volvo, and Olympic sailing, courtesy of Skandia. However the Olympic classes themselves have been singularly unsuccessful in securing sponsorship, until Seiko Watches' decision to support the International 49er class.  Much as I'd like to take credit for securing the deal, there is no connection here between the 49er deal and the Laser 5000 sponsorship that I enjoyed more than 10 years ago.

In fact, contrary to what you might expect, rather than being wooed by the 49er class, it was Seiko that decided it wanted to get involved in sailing, but didn't quite know where. After consulting with various experts such as Ed Leask (former Soling crew to Chris Law and Lawrie Smith, and director of Sports Management agency Fast Track), Seiko homed in on the 49er class as offering the right mix of ingredients.

Marketing director Rob Wilson said Seiko consciously didn't wanted to get involved in the politics and self-aggrandising world of the America's Cup, but was looking for a more grass roots involvement. Seiko has launched a new range of marine watches called Velatura, and saw the 49er as the ‘right fit' for the brand. "These products are not about sitting at the back of the yacht sipping a gin and tonic," says Rob. "We want to be at the cutting edge, delivering what sailors want. We wanted to get our feet wet in the sport itself. Having made that decision to link up to sailing, it was quite a simple road to the 49er class, as it seemed far and away the most dynamic, exciting and demanding of the Olympic classes."

Rob and his Seiko colleagues consulted closely with the sailors to ask what features they wanted out of a sailing watch, and so the resulting Velatura range has been very sailor-led. That said, who would want a four-figure price tag hanging precariously off the end of their arm during a race? It hurts enough when you reach the end of the race to discover your £20 Casio didn't make it there with you. "Actually, I'd defy anyone to break the triple safety clasp on these watches," asserts Rob. Even so, would I wear an expensive analogue timepiece for racing in favour of my trusty digital Casio? No, still wouldn't, and nor would the vast majority of Olympic aspirants. Rob Wilson is realistic about that fact. However, the cachet for Seiko is to be able to associate its watches with high-level Olympic performers even if they are not the target market for these timepieces.

The other things that work for Seiko in the deal are the access to strong and exciting images of Seiko-branded 49ers in the heat of battle, and also the ability to take staff or clients to nice venues such as Sicily which is where the 49er Europeans are taking place during September.

In the case of Seiko, the 49ers were very fortunate to have the company come knocking on their door, but it does strike me there are many other high performance classes out there that can also provide big corporations with exciting imagery for them to associate with. If anything, the watch and car manufacturers need exciting photos least of all, because they are in themselves quite sexy products. But think about faceless products such as computer software, and the need for some thrilling imagery is even greater. Just think about Basilica's sponsorship of Rob Greenhalgh's Extreme 40 campaign and all the brand exposure that Basilica Computing's managing director Nick Gorringe has extracted from his 40-foot cat racing around the country.

There are must be other great opportunities out there for the high performance classes to pull in title sponsorship of the kind that the Laser SB3 and 49er are now enjoying. Let's hope we see more of these deals spring up over the coming years, because sailing would be the richer (in every sense) for it.