Interview: Daniel Henderson - Musto Performance Skiff World Champion.

Earlier this year, twenty year old British sailor Daniel Henderson was crowned Musto Performance Skiff World Champion after winning the series, hosted by the Black Rock Yacht Club in Australia, with a race to spare. We caught up with Daniel on his return to the UK to find out more about him and get the inside story on his world championship winning performance.

Daniel you are only twenty, but you started early and have sailed a number of different classes on the way to your MPS World Championship victory. Talk us through your sailing career prior to the MPS?

I started off in Optimists when I was five years old and sailed them through to when I was about twelve or thirteen, I then sailed an RS Feva and Laser Radial until I was fourteen. Then I moved on to the 29er which I sailed until I was sixteen. That was all back home in Essex where I am a member of Thorpe Bay Yacht Club and Blackwater Sailing Club. I’m at Portsmouth University now (in my second year studying Water Sports Science) so I sail at Stokes Bay Sailing Club.

How were you introduced to the MPS fleet?

A good friend of mine Steve Hopper had bought a Musto Skiff and wanted my father to put his company graphics on the hull. So Steve dropped the boat round to our house. At the time I was still sailing the Feva and I remember just sitting in the garden starring at the boat, thinking one day I would like to sail one of them. My father was also good friends with Paul Manning and Tim & Kay Tavinor who were involved with the sales of Musto Skiffs at the time, which made it easy for me to organise a test sail.

The first time I sailed an MPS was in 2006 at Thorpe Bay on Steve Hopper’s, GBR 170 - which later became my first MPS. It was in very light winds, hardly wiring. For my first sail it went OK, but then the conditions weren’t very challenging.

Once you joined the class, you clearly made an impression pretty quickly - finishing second in the 2007 and 2009 UK National Championships. How long did it take you to get competitive?

As I recall, it took me about half to three quarter’s of a year to become competitive and to achieve reasonable boat handling. I was always quite quick in the light winds and this is why I managed a good result at the 2007 nationals, where the wind didn’t go over ten knots for the whole regatta. To be honest I have only just started to get good results in the heavier winds. I practice a reasonable amount - boat handling exercises, as well as some straight line boat-on-boat speed practice. I think you just have to spend a lot of time in the boat. In a class like the MPS, the more hours you get under your belt, the more natural and instinctive everything feels.

Read the rest in the March issue >>>