RECEIVING an award from the Queen is one of those things you never think about when you are out there sailing and racing. After I won my first gold medal at the Sydney Olympics, somebody said to me, “Oh, that means you get an MBE”, and I was quite shocked.

I had not really understood that or expected an award and so I did not know what to think after gold No 2 in Athens. But, of course, it is a huge honour to be appointed OBE.

This has been another incredible year for British sailing, with five medals at the Olympics and top-nation status for the second Games in a row, and now we are all enthralled by the performance of our solo round-the-world racers, particularly Ellen MacArthur in her attempt on the 72-day single-handed record, and Mike Golding’s bid to win the Vendée Globe.

Ellen is a phenomenon, really, and, like everyone else, it amazes me what she does. There is no doubt she is the real driving force behind the British public’s enthusiasm for sailing. They can identify with what she does and that is great.

When Ellen and Mark Turner, her manager, announced their plan to take on Francis Joyon’s record, it certainly seemed very ambitious, but if anyone was going to do it, it was Ellen. And it really is no surprise that she is doing so well when you look at the level of professionalism and the team ethos they have created.

This campaign is a follow-on from what Ellen did in the Vendée Globe in 2000 in Kingfisher, her Open 60. You look at all other successful sailing teams around the world, it is always a similar process. You need the right people, the funding is obviously key but, most important, you need to do all the small things well and that is what Ellen is good at.Everything seems to have gone well for her so far. She has had some tough conditions but has come through; the boat has stood up to it and she is coping.

Talking to Roger Badham, the Emirates Team New Zealand (ETNZ) meteorologist, the other day, he seemed to think the big factor now will be the weather coming back up the Atlantic. Although Joyon did not have a weather router, he had a dream ticket all the way through and I suppose the weather gods could still play a very big part in it. You just have to hope that, after all her hard work, Ellen gets a break and gets through OK.

Golding has been impressive, too. I looked at how far behind the lead he was three or four weeks ago, when he was something like 800 miles off the pace, and I thought it was going to be pretty hard to get on terms. But he has ground his way back to third place and just a couple of hundred miles behind Jean Le Cam, which is really commendable. Hopefully, Mike can keep the charge going. I would think that Le Cam is looking over his shoulder at him now.

Mike has tried so many times and has had so many disasters, with his mast falling down and running ashore and so on, so hopefully this time it will all come good for him.

I am just back from two months with ETNZ in New Zealand, where I competed in the national match-racing championship. I had to qualify because I do not have a ranking, but that proved a good opportunity to get some time in the boat and get into the match-racing discipline — the calls and moves and everything.

The biggest thing for me was sailing with Rod Davis, the American veteran of something like ten America’s Cups, who did the mainsheet and tactics, which was a great opportunity and I learnt a huge amount sailing with him.

We made it through the feeder series and then finished second in the nationals, losing to Dean Barker, the ETNZ skipper, in the final. I had been under a bit of pressure from the ETNZ management to get a good result and prove I had promise in the match-racing arena, so this was a definite confidence-booster for me. But it is just the beginning and there is a hell of a long way to go and still a lot to learn.