There were dozens of great stories we found out about over the weekend and I just wish we could have made each press release about 10,000 words long so we could have conveyed them all to a wider audience.  Instead we’ll keep updating you on the snippets here.

Graham Hetherington, owner and helmsman of Great Bear IV, was unable to race on the final day and at the gala dinner on Tuesday evening his crew – Jane Saunders, Kate Mandel-Ferreira, Amy Smith and Steve Mitchell – were hunting around to see if they could find someone to fill in at the last moment.  They even tried to persuade yours truly to give up the press boat and join them at one point (pretty tempting but sadly work had to come first).  Ultimately they couldn’t find anyone who could take a day off work at such short notice, but they weren’t to be deterred and despite it being perhaps the windiest day of the week they set off four up for the race course.  With three races still to come the girls decided they would helm one race each and a great job of it they did.  Graham will be relieved to see that they didn’t quite manage to beat his own results from earlier in the regatta, but they did well enough to keep the boat in 15th place overall.  Great teamwork girls and well done Steve for such a sterling crewing job.