Added by Ollie: 14th Feb 2010 The chance to jump into an R Class and sail my first Leander Trophy Regatta was just too good to turn down. So I teamed up with Malcolm Snowdon (helm) and we spent a day cleaning the dust off and getting the boat "VR" back into a condition that would hopefully stand up to four days of hard racing on Lyttelton Harbour!

We turned up on Thursday to be meet by the crews of 9 boats making the final tweaks to their equipment and eyeing up the new sets of hydrofoils that some of the guys had spent countless hours building and testing over the winter. This was the first Leander that the hydrofoils were going to be properly raced and everyone was interested to see how they would go in a national regatta!

You soon realise, while you are trying to keep these boats upright just getting off the ramp, that you are not sailing a normal boat anymore! At a hull weight of about 35kg you don't need wheels on your launching trolley and you definitely can't lie back in the boat to eat your sandwiches between races. For the whole time you are on the water you are in a constant battle to stay dry... but when you get round the top mark in a close bunch of boats and pop the kite it makes all the effort worth it!

The next few days kind of turned into a blur......... full of fast sailing, lots of swimming, shouting, and making constant running repairs on/off the water! But we managed to finish every race thanks to the new Formula 1 format of begin able to finish on the same lap as the winner even if someone had sailed twice as many laps as you. This was definitely a cool idea in some of the races when Paul and Dan had their hydrofoils working to full effect and were doing in excess of 18 knots upwind!

On the Sunday a five race sprint series was run just off the beach so the crowd could have the best view of the action. With a very short course set, some heated racing lead to heaps of near misses and spills making a great spectacle.

To sum up, this was the most exciting regatta I have sailed in and I would like to give a big thanks to Naval Point Club Lyttelton, the R Class Squadron and also Hadley Pettigrew for lending us the boat. It won't be my last R Class Nationals and it will be cool to see lots of new sailors having a go next year!

Check out a cool movie of Paul and Dan hydrofoiling on the R Class Website Here!!

Some photos of the Sunday Sprint Series: