Well, Mr Know-it-all, here you are on a very skinny foredeck belonging to 'Athena', a gorgeous racing 8-Metre yacht, owned by a Peer of the Realm, Lord Jonathan of Cork, who has assumed from your Australian accent that you are the very bee's-knee's of foredeck hands, (despite being the oldest person on the boat), and miracles of calm efficiency are expected ! Oh, and did I mention I am nursing a shoulder cuff injury from a previous attempt at biting off more than I could chew.

Sailors being a conservative lot, evolution happened about as fast as continents drift. Even as rigging changed from hemp to stainless steel, and sail cloth changed from flax to cotton to Dacron, sail plans remained largely the same. By the 1960s most racing boats had discovered that a single mainsail worked better than two: yawls and ketches were abandoned in favor of higher-pointing sloops and cutters. But foretriangles remained split, especially aboard non-racing yachts without the luxury of plentiful and athletic crews

Having sailed hard in the big winds in the early part of the week and then dominating in the light breeze in the second half of the regatta, it was the Metre yachts that triumphed overall

Non of that Gallic rubbish for the Brits! Keep the emotion out of it, tell it as it happened, and for God sake don’t let on that you’re enjoying yourself!

It’s hard to believe it, but in England, the Classic Yachting fraternity is slap bang in the middle of its biggest week of the year.