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VocalEyes wil celebrate it's 1000th audio described performance on Friday 17 Feb 2012 with Opera North's production of Norma. Toby Davey from VocalEyes and a blind theatre goer explains more about audio description and VocalEyes...

Welcome to my next Ipadio phone blog. It's Toby Davey blind sailor. The last phone blog you have for me was out in Australia earlier this year at the World Match Racing Championships. I've being in Italy this week for the Italian National Match Racing Championships which is also an open event. We have 5 Italian teams, 2 Brit teams, 1 Australian and 1 Spanish team out here on Lake Garda in Italy. The team that I was with in Perth was myself, Lucy Hodges doing tactics and Sharon Grennan on helm. This time it was just Sharon and me so I was doing tactics and Sharon concentrated on helming.

Well the Championship is now over. It's the day after the closing ceremony so few sore heads around Perth this morning. But it's been a fantastic Championships, we couldn't have had a better host club with The Royal Perth Yacht Club. Organization both on and off the water has been fantastic. The race committee, the observers, the umpires, all the organization of getting the boats out on the water, spectator boats and everything has been fantastic. We couldn't have wanted for anything more. The on shore side of things, organizing the picking teams up from the hotels, getting them down to the Yacht Club all the staff in the Wardroom and bar, all the other staff at the yacht club has been brilliant. A really really well run event.

Well this is now Thursday and we have just completed the 2nd round robin. We were out first 2 races of the day which were flight 12 and 13 and we had interesting races. We had some good winds, some good starts and practically you know it was a good race but sadly the other 2 teams I guess did slightly better than us so we didn't do so well in our first 2 races of the day and we did think after the first race after losing it 'oh god, this is the end of our championships, we've thrown it out the window, this is the end for us, we're not going to get into the semi-finals' but after doing those first two races we double checked the results and realised we still had a chance of getting through.

Well this is now Tuesday afternoon here in Perth. After day 3 of the World Blind Match racing championships, another day sailing for both GB Teams. Myself, Lucy and Sharon were again out on the water. At the beginning of the day they have to finish off 2 races which we tried to do last night or yesterday afternoon but were unable to do so because of the lack of wind. So the last two races of the first round robin were done first thing this morning and then we went straight into the second round robin.

Well it's now the end day 2 of the Regatta. We almost finished the first round Robin and winds were very good in the morning a nice good steady breeze a bit fluctuating around windward mark on the course on some of the races and then in the middle of the afternoon the wind died as they were just about to finish the last 2 races of the first round and because of lack of wind they had to postpone racing for the rest of the day. So how did we do? We did a little better than we did on Sunday. On Sunday we didn't win either of our two races. Today we did four races and won three of them. This means in the first round robin we've won three out of six races and need to do well in the next round robin. We won against the Italians, the Spanish, the Australians and lost to the New Zealand team. The Spanish were really pushing us at the start but we managed to hold them off. We had a bit of a tactical error on the start line with the New Zealand team and although it was close they just managed to hold us off and gain the win. The good thing is to have some wins under our belt and really good sailing today with good wind.

Toby Davey is competing in the World Blind Match Racing Champs in Perth Australia and is sponsored by ipadio.com

Well, day 1 of sailing in Perth is over now so we've had 1 day's racing. We've sort of had a mixed day. Wind was much stronger then it has been which is really good and it picked up quite a bit during the day, they had to reef main sails and it was really good. Our first race in GB boat 1 was the 7th race of the day so we had quite a bit of time sat on the spectator boat watching the other races which was really good to see how the other teams were doing. See how close things were and it's really interesting that in some races there really wasn't much in it tactics wise and sailing wise between the teams while others got a good lead round the course and there was some really good bits of racing.

Hi welcome to my next Ipadio blog from the World Blind Match Racing Championships in Perth, Australia where it's now Saturday. We've had two practice sessions on the water, one yesterday on Friday with very little wind to start off with but the wind did pick up for the last half an hour of our time out on the water which was really good and we were trying to ready ourselves. Sharon was good on the helm, Lucy was doing well main sheet trimming and I was doing pretty well on the gib and we went through some practice tacks and gybing and practiced rounding the marks and stuff like that but it was really really good time to get out on the water. It's a shame we only had half an hour of good sailing.

Hi, it's Toby and I've now arrived in Australia. Good flight, very long, very bizarre. When flying east with the clock moving forward I found that in the middle of the afternoon it all went dark and then at midnight we started having breakfast on the plane which was a strange experience. We are all here now in Perth, both GB Teams 1 and 2. We found out where the Yacht Club was, we found out where the amenities are and had a good look around. Everyone is very friendly.