Draper Greenhalgh Update
Written by Chris Draper | 27 October 2010
Well hello all. Our apologies for no updates for a while. It has been a busy time for us both since the Sail for Gold regatta. The SFG pretty much marked the end of the season. Always a time for a bit of reflection and also an opportunity to do a bit of other sailing.
Peter and I were really lucky to Join Alex Jackson on board his Melges 32 Leenabarca for the world championships and a few pre-event regattas in San Francisco. Peters brother Robert had been working with Alex and his team for a few months and it was great to join him and the rest of the team on board.
It was a really good event and we were pleased with our overall position of 6th. The fleet was very strong with plenty of very high level sailors on the other boats and with little prep time this was a nice outcome.
We also started to get back into a bit of 49er sailing. We did a few days to get our kit together to send out to Perth before we went to the Melges Worlds and then started back full time after the San Fran event itself.
We took delivery of our new boat from Mackay boats in NZL which we have been really pleased with.Our training has been going really well and we have had lots of really windy days which is perfect preparation for the Perth event in November.
We are hard into boat handling at the moment while trying to slowly tick off the things we have revealed as weak areas over the last six months. From the start of December we will really move into winter training mode. Our whole program will move to Cadiz and we plan to train there with a great group of foreign teams and some of the British teams.
We are really looking forward to a very good, intense winter of training. With our various coaches help Peter and I have put a great team package together and proven we are capable of winning the highest level events together. We simply have some refining to do to make those medal winning performances totally solid and put ourselves in a position to win more events and that is what this winter will be all about.
We are really grateful to all our sponsors and we were really pleased to welcome Kaenon Polarized Sunglasses to our sponsors. Their glasses are amazing and really do make a difference to our performance on the water. We are also really pleased to renew our partnership with Holt who have been long standing supporters of Peter and I in our various other exploits. Great fittings that we have relied on for years.
Thanks to all for your ongoing support, all the best,
Chris and Peter