Foilborne: February 2010

Hello from Valencia. With two of the coolest multihulls on the planet about to go head to head, this is the place to be. Forget the court cases, I’m interested in the boats, and it should be quite a show.

I’ve been a bit poor on the blogging front recently because I’ve been so busy. It’s been a good couple of months though. I was out in Rio with Iain Percy and Andrew Simpson in December while they were training for the Star Worlds, so that was great when they won that one in Jan. Then it was skiing in Les Arc, and then Miami OCR. It was good to catch up with Bora, Bear, Dalton and Brad out there, and I’d say team USA is looking good for the Worlds. I'll have to back date some blogs as I've got loads of great photos from various places, and screen grabs of the media interest in Katherine's foiling oppie (9000 hits on her blog in one day!) But with the AC tomorrow, I don't have time to write about all of that, so I'll do it all out of order slightly.

We got down here on Saturday, and have got to see Alinghi up pretty close, and watch them coming in and out from training sessions. We saw BMW Oracle leaving the commercial port this morning for a training session, unfurling the code zero in the entrance and setting off at quite a pace.

Caught up with loads of people down here which has been really nice. Being back on the Victory Challenge base today was cool. Bumped into a load of Mothies. Morgan Larson is around, and met a Japanese Moth sailor, who approached us after seeing my jacket.

Tom Whicher and team Southampton made it down after a longer than planned roadtrip – so we had tea with them! And I know of loads of others who are around.

Tom and Katherine taking Alinghi for a spin today, while I sat along for the ride!

Opening ceremony

Race officer Harold Bennet asks 'Heads or tails?' Starboard please! is the answer from the commodore of the Societe Nautique de Geneve. 'Err heads or tails?' Harold asks again! He chose tails and lost!

Fireworks - Valencia style