Day 5

You often get asked what a sailing coach actually does. Essentially, we're part mentor, part guide, part trainer. At this level it's rarely about instruction but more shared discovery...For me there's 4 fundamentals: Teamwork, Technical Development, Technique and Tactics.

We've spend the last 3 days on boatwork and its the realisation of 3 months of technical development. Even with so much preparation in the UK it still feels like we're trying to move one step too far. We have so much kit out here: 2 boats, 4 masts, 4 sets of sails and 4 sets of rigging. Each combination presents another variable and my head gaskets about to blow.
My job is to ensure we deliver the most usable set up for the Games that has speed in all conditions. We have the numbers, we've spent six months finding them. The issue is reproducing them on both boats with any given combination of kit so that we have only one variable, the piece of kit being evaluated.

The next 10 days will be about validating our Games Kit so we can confidently choose which boat, which mast and which set of Sails. That and a few other tricks which we hope will give us an advantage come race 1.

So tomorrow is test day 1. Lets hope our development pays off and that we've got speed to burn!