After investing in a lovely new road trailer, Richard Hudson and Ben Cutler hit the road this year with Mirror 67961.  This year we competed in the Mirror Southern traveller series and some of the Mirror class Open coaching events. We visited opens at Hamble, Warsash, Chichester, Maidenhead, Spinaker and  Hillhead.

This meant some early starts but generally pleasant weather in a variety of interesting places.  My favourite was Hill Head where it was a battle to stay upright.  In general the Mirror class is keenly contested by the South coast clubs. It would be lovely to see some more inland boats competing. Having said that, the current national champion, Hector Ciscnero comes from nearby Reading Sailing Club.

As the series progressed, Ben and I discovered that we sailed best in stronger winds where our all up weight in the Mirror matters.  Our favourite venue was Hillhead where we have raced once before. Hillhead is near Lee on Solent and the race area is in shallow tidal waters on the Solent which is quite exposed.  The result is a wild ride with loads of spray. Unfortunately we were holed on the start line inside our rear buoyancy tank at the third race and had to high tail back ashore before we sank.

Just for fun we competed in the RYA Southern Zone Championship on Portland Harbour. This was held at the brand new Weymouth and Portland Sailing Academy where the Olympics are due to be held in 2012.

This event was the largest ever held at the facility with 275 boats entered in all the RYA Junior pathway classes. Saturday was blown out for all except Optimists and Laser 4.7s, but all fleets raced in F3/F4 conditions on the Sunday resulting in some exciting racing some distance out into the harbour.

As a result of this performance, we were asked to join the Mirror Zone squad. Ben retired at this point to pursue GCSEs  and so Christopher Hudson is manning the pointy end for the Zone squad training.

The Zone squad training has kicked off in a windy downpour at Poole under the tutelage of Matt Burge. Matt is the current national 420 champion and a former Mirror sailor, so he knows a thing or two about making three sailed symmetrics go quickly.

We are finding the training at the south zone squad very useful. There is a lot of help and we are beginning to understand the boat.

Our next aim is to compete at the Europeans which are being held in Poole in July 2006. This should be a good experience for me and we are hoping to do well.

R Hudson.