UK sailor Andy Green sends us his observations on the sailing scene across the pond. Enjoy.

The time has come in most British years when summer is upon us, the smell of freshly cut grass, the sound of leather on willow and the sight of hundreds of racing boats shouting for 'Water' (Room at the mark for you fellow WMD hunters).

This year the we have gratefully accepted the onset of global warming and the summer started hot and sunny in April and hasn't stopped since, boats are prepped sooner, race ready and on the water earlier.

Good news stories from Blighty are topped by the potential medal haul in Athens. Ben Ainslie is the man, Ian Percy and Steve Mitchell are superb, consistent breeze and the more the better will see them on the podium but in the Star Class there are a lot of Stars and a lot of Class! Shirley Robertson and her team in the Yngling, Nick Rogers and Jo Glanfield in the 470 and Chris Draper and Simon Hiscocks in the 49er all have Olympic experience and medals, podiums are pretty certain, the colour less so, Shirley has won a gold already the 470 boys were 4th last time, with the 49er crew looking solid and a silver in Simon's harness the Olympics is all about the pressure at the event. A lump of coal for the losers but those that handle the pressure best see it turn a different colour!

It was good to see US 49er sailor Tim Wadlow putting in some essential rules and boat-on-boat practice to the test at this year's Wilson Trophy Team Racing event in West Kirby. There is now a regular migration of a least 6 US based teams who have always competed and won on numerous occasions, much to the chagrin of the Brits. However, it is also good to see Tim following the Olympic dream, the US has by far the biggest pool of talented sailors throughout its schools and college system and it is amazing so few make the transition to Olympic sailing. I don't buy the lack of funding argument, low take up looks more like the lure of wall street for some very smart college sailors to make a bucket load of cash before they reach 30.
The lure of the 2005 team racing world championships in Newport will ensure some stiff competition for US places and a cracking event. Ken Legler will, as always, provide world-class commentary. The NYYC team and Silver Panda were beaten in the semis by The Pirates and Spinnaker SC the eventual winners.

GBR Challenge have had a tough first few months of 2004, pinning their hopes on our Olympic heros Ian and Ben signing up was always going to be a difficult PR spin if they went elsewhere, which they did. There still seems to be a slight hangover in Cowes, however, a year of diligent design and behind the scenes work courtesy of Peter Harrison is putting them in a strong position. For a big-blue chip company the £20million in primary sponsorship that is required looks increasingly cheap. With the cup in Europe, Alinghi spending buckets on promotion and publicity and the prospect of three years of valuable press before the cup even starts compared to other events the unparalleled prestige of the cup makes it look cheap. Whether this is enough money to win remains to be seen, but if the boat is fast, anything's possible.

Other highlights include Conrad Humphries in The Transat, an older boat and a tireless struggle to get funding saw Motorola eventually get him into the big league and if they pony up the cash for a new boat he'll be in the chocolates for the Vendee Globe. Mike Golding got the monkey off his back by winning after a string of seconds. He'll be happy and surely Ecover is a great example of value for money sponsorship.

In January I did the Farr 40's in Key West, Mean Machine won and seems to have won everything else since, so it was with some trepidation that I embarked on the Mumm 30 Europeans Last week in Hamble. A real pleasure to do a competitive regatta and be able to live at home in Southampton, 27 boats with plenty of foreign competition made for some tight racing, I was sailing with a French team practicing my linguistics and my fleet racing. Fortunately for me they were well polished and more importantly quite fast. We were ahead the first day and second thereafter, we kept it very close but to no avail and Mean Machine won with Asterix, by far the best UK boat in third. If your interested in anything French a puff is "un rise". 'quiche' is hike harder and they have a very nice word for a potential port/starboard, they call one word, simply; 'Contact' its concise, describes the problem and demands a solution! I'm certainly using it on my boats from now on.