"Our team consisted of myself, Golden Mgedeza, foredeck, Mark Lagesse on compass, haliards and max boep, Charles Nankin on genoa car and spinnaker trim, Mike Giles in the cockpit. Anthony Steward was the manager and chief abuser and Salvatore Sarno of MSC was the sponsor and self-appointed chief of lucky charms. We chartered Pete Shaw's boat, which is in very good condition. Our brief was to win and bring the trophy to Durban for a change. Our club, ZVYC, agreed to host it there.

We came together for the first time at the WP champs the week-end before, but the basic team had been training in the evenings for a week before that. Every evening, when I arrived for training it was howling and raining and my team mates had grumpy looks on their faces, but I thought that as i had driven so far, we had to go training. So we trained in the cold and dark for a few hours every evening. The funny thing is, that we had a lot of fun, once we got out, and seemed to really gelling as a team.We thought we would do really well in the strong wind. Our emphasis was on simplicity and doing the basic very well. This would allow us to sail with our heads out of the boat and feel the wind better. Last year, team MSC was a development team and no one thought we had a chance so we managed to escape from all "off the water drama". This year we were not so lucky. While the "dramas" make the event less enjoyable, it certainly served to heighten our motivation.

As far as our regatta strategy went, our aim was to average 3rd position for the long first half of the regatta, when the rules only allow one race a day. After that, see where we stood and then watch other boats. As it turned out, we had a narrow lead after the 3 races, so we could just keep sailing against the wind and let the other boats make the mistakes. In the end it worked out. Except for the first race, we lead around every first mark (even in the race that was abandoned).I made quite a few mistakes though, especially in the first race, where I missed some shifts and I had two pretty hopeless starts later on, but the strength lay in the team and the "vibe" on the boat was so good that we didn't worry. The two bitches (pronounced in the capie way - bithz) Lurge and Giles, were always good for a laugh. I have to ruin their image and tell you that they are very serious during the races. Goldie was always faithfully working on the pointy end and his commitment over the last few years paid off as he became the first black man to win the trophy. Charlie took care of all the "little things" and organising, and sorting out of problems. (which I normally leave in the hopes that they solve themselves)

The other part of our team was the Donna Mia "B" team who represented SPYC. It is fun to be part of a team that is learning fast and is motivated. Our donna mia "b" team did very well. 3 of the crew only started sailing 5 months ago. They finished a remarkable 11th, using our old sails and a main borrowed from dave hudson. In the training, we emphasised commitment, motivation, honour and pride. One evening, we had a psyche up session at Ant and Suzie Steward's house and we showed them the movie "cool runnings" and they adopted it as their theme. Skipper, Mathew Henry Strangebru E Mentz is a surprisingly fast helmsman, a very good teacher and the most chilled individual of all the planets he has been to. Watch this team in future.

Here is my (unsolicited) 2 cents worth of how to make the regatta even bigger next year. (50 boats?):

1. The boats with good sponsors can afford new sails for the regatta giving them a speed advantage. It's no fun if there are only a few boats that can win. The class allows a very low cloth weight in the genoa and light spinnaker. The genoa, especially, is completely stretched after one regatta. We have got to make sure that costs are curtailed to give teams with less funding a chance. Cloth weights should be increased to enable the sails to last a few more regattas. A grandfather clause could make old sails legal for another year.(they are all stuffed anyway).

2. An emphasis on trying to gain an advantage through equipment, should be frowned upon. Any "rule tweakers" should be disallowed. How about a panel of "wise men" from the L26 committee and Lipton committee to give each boat the once over and disallow anything which looks "slimy" . No fiddling to gain a speed edge. The boats that I have sailed all feel and perform very differently. The aim should be to make the boats as similar as possible and any teams trying to find loopholes in rules should be made to understand that it is against the spirit of one design racing.

3. Please run Lipton during the school holidays