America's Cup World Series Portsmouth Moth Invitational Regatta

by Chris Rashley 30 Jul 2015 08:42 BST 23-26 July 2015

I often get asked the same three things by people outside of sailing, "when is your next race?", "how far it is?" and "how long it will take?". Most people are very surprised to hear that we usually complete 12-18 races at a major championships and 5-8 over a weekend. They are more surprised that the races only last between 20-40 minutes and are now often within a few hundred metres from the shore. However, even being just a few hundred metres from the shore still poses an access problem for the media and spectators.

Once every four years the Olympics is one of the few times we actually get to see sailing racing on the TV, coupled with good commentary and pictures shot from a helicopter or cameras strategically located on landmarks or large boats. Unfortunately, for the most part, this has just cemented the public's view of sailing as slow, boring and complicated: the vast majority of Olympic sailing boats are very old fashioned and chosen for their accessibility, cost and availability around the world, rather than to demonstrate the cutting edge of sailing technology. Saying that, not all Olympic classes are boring to watch - I personally really enjoyed watching the windsurfing and 49er racing at the London Olympics. That said, both of these classes really need at least 14 knots of wind to start looking spectacular.

Anyone still saying all sailing is boring should have been silenced by the 2013 America's Cup. The helicopter pictures, brilliant commentary and live on-boat footage really got you connected with the action. There is no doubt that this event caught the eye of the media, and has helped the new America's Cup teams secure funding and support from major sponsors and their countries as a whole. Ben Ainslie has done wonders for sailing in the UK and the BAR base in Portsmouth has transformed the city and people's perception of sailing.

Recently the current America's Cup World Series kicked off preparations for the 2017 America's Cup with the first four-day event in Portsmouth. Along with five other top class Moth sailors, I was asked to compete at the event in a series of short exhibition Moth races. The daily plan was to complete 3-4 races very close to the shore, with the goal of giving the spectators something spectacular to watch 11am - midday, before the AC boats came out in the afternoon.

The Moth class in the UK is strong, with a deep talent pool of sailors from all sorts of different sailing backgrounds. This meant the event organisers didn't have to go far to find some of the top Moth sailors in the world. Racing alongside me in our six boat fleet were:

• Robert Greenhalgh: Volvo Ocean Race sailor and winner, as well as winner of both the 18ft Skiff and International 14 World Championships.

• Simon Hiscocks: Double Olympic medallist and multiple World and European 49er Champion.

• Jason Belben: Former 420 and 470 Junior World Champion who represented GBR at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. He has also won the UK Moth National Championships twice.

• Dylan Fletcher: Current member of the British Sailing Team's 49er podium squad who has also been double 49er European Champion and National Champion.

• Mike Lennon: Multiple national dinghy class champion including having been Melges 24 National Champion and Moth National Champion.

As we are much smaller, more manoeuvrable and foil in less and more unstable wind then the AC boats, holding racing very close to the shore was no problem for us. Despite the wind direction and strength not being ideal, we managed to complete 10 races with the majority of the course marks within 100m of the shore. I obviously didn't get to watch the racing myself but with the help of a helicopter, TV screen and commentary I was told that the racing was a success. That's not to say that the Moth is the only thing that can do exciting stadium racing. Steph and Olly Bridge were also at the event on their foiling kite boards and demonstrated that the kite foiler is a good solution for the direction that sailing is, and needs, to go in.

As for the experience of sailing in front of a crowd of any size, it was a first for me as there were 3,000 to 50,000 people lining the shores to watch the racing each day. I can't say that people watching me sailing made any real difference to how I sailed, but rounding the windward mark or going through the finish and the commentator announcing my name reminded me that people were actually paying attention - and that possibly spurred me on a little.

Having just enough time to get back to shore de-rig, get changed and grab some lunch, I made it up to the fan zone area just in time to catch a few AC practice races on Friday and the second actual race on Saturday. Despite the weather conditions being far from ideal over the four day event, with particularly stormy conditions forcing an abandonment on Sunday, the AC boats provided a stunning spectacle for the crowds on Friday and Saturday. In my view, BAR were a league ahead of the rest. They had won the vast majority of training races in the 10 days before the event, and then showed real class by delivering when it mattered during the races that counted on the Saturday - something that Ben has been doing for his whole career.

So while BAR took the honours for the ACWS Portsmouth event, how did we fare in the Moths? We followed the scoring within the usual America's Cup format (10 points for 1st, 9 points for 2nd, and so on; no discards; all the starts under black flag) and the results were:

Overall Results:

Pos	Helm	R1	R2	R3	R4	R5	R6	R7	R8	R9	R10	Pts
		Thursday				Friday			Saturday
1	Chris Rashley	10	10	10	10	10	10	10	10	9	10	99
2	Jason Beleben	6	9	9	9	9	9	8	7	8	6	80
3	Rob Greenhalgh	9	6	7	7	8	8	9	6	10	9	79
4	Mike Lennon	8	7	6	8	5	6	5	9	7	5	66
5	Dylan Fletcher	5	8	8	6	7	5	6	8	5	8	66
6	Simon Hiscocks	7	5	5	5	6	7	7	5	6	7	60

I was delighted to win the event against some of my strongest opponents. It sets me up well for the Moth Class's next major event, the European Championships at the end of August. I'm looking forward to it and training hard.

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