BT Nick Moloney's report from iShares Cup Cowes

'BMW ORACLE Racing Cammas collide with BT at Skandia Cowes Week' Mark Lloyd &copy

Nick Moloney's report from his recent iShares Cup event in Cowes. It was certainly an eventful time for Moloney on BT, the Extreme 40, with high winds and extreme weather causing many problems including a collision with Cammas on BMW Oracle Racing, that left both multihulls damaged.

Nick Moloney:

'Probably the wildest three days of short course racing I have experienced in my 20 years as a professional sailor! Exhausting in a mental and physical sense but simply awesome.its events like this that live with you for a long time yet unfortunately our result overall was noting short of terrible.

Its been a crazy few weeks with the speed trial in London and then home for a few days break before our training session prior to this event. Generally this is the event that we push for our best event result in that hope that we can carry that through to the end of the season, yet this event was to be our worst result in all of our time with this class, so to say that we are now on the back foot is a bit of an understatement.

Somehow we have managed to hang on to fourth overall in the overall series and still have a chance of achieving our season objective of making the podium for the year in the class.

Our event didn't start well .. on day one we were involved in a very high speed and dangerous collision which resulted in a lot of damage between ourselves and team BMW Oracle, our opponent breaking their front beam and rendering the boat unusable for the rest of the event.

The racing was held in more wind than we have ever sailed in and as a fleet battled to maintain control over our boats. The conditions led to five capsizes and two broken masts throughout the fleet ... it was simply amazing and at times we were dodging upturned boats and swimming crews in the middle of the course.

Nick Moloney and crew on BT - iShares Cup&copy

Just insane. The event has left me pretty knackered and my words will not describe the action nearly as well as the stills and video footage on the official web site - www.isharescup.com

Check it out.

Nick - www.nickmoloney.com

by Nick Moloney/Sail-World.com