What a weekend!

Photo credits: w-w-i.com

Phew what a weekend!

It was one of the busiest of the season for me - well that's before Skandia Cowes Week clashed with the Bristol Balloon Festival, but more of that soon!

This weekend was the JP Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race AND the Gunwharf Quays Waterfront Festival which incorporated their annual Food Festival. As a long time presenter of the Food Festival it was a hard choice as to where to be on Saturday. In the end I had a fantastic team working on the radio syndication on the Isle of Wight and I got up close and personal with the chefs!

The Round the Island race turned out to be a very good one this year, if a little soggy! I arrived on the Island on Saturday night to find Lea Bennett a very happy lady. Lea is Race Secretary at the organisers, the Island Sailing Club.

My team's job was to get some great interviews with interesting people and send them to radio stations right around the country. I am delighted to say that the team caught up with Alan Titchmarsh who started the race, Dame Ellen MacArthur who took line honours, Sir Robin Knox-Johnston and Dee Caffari as well as a host of competitors and organisers.

One of the interviews we did with double Gold Olympic medallist Shirley Robertson really struck a chord with me. She talked about the race being so special because everyone is up so early and all of competitors experience the same euphoria when they eventually get round the 55 mile course.

That's the one thing I love about events - you all come together as a team, usually pretty early in the day before anyone arrives, you work really hard together and produce, you hope, a great result.

It's the same with filming for Yachting TV. We get together with cameraman, sound man or lady and a producer, guests, the location and a great idea - and hours, sometimes lots of hours, later we have some great footage. Then our clever editors get to work and after more hours we have a feature for the programme. It's fascinating and incredibly rewarding especially as so many people are now telling us what they think of the programmes and what else they would like to see.

I understand Sir Robin Knox-Johnston injured his elbow in the race so my best wishes for a speedy recovery! I am looking foward to sitting down with Robin soon to chat about the race and the Velux 5 Oceans and what next. Hopefully our camera will be there too.

Well it's catching up day today. With the wind howling around and the rain deluging I am pretty glad I am not on the water!