Mark Watson will roll back the years when he competes in the fourth and final event of the inaugural M32 Bermuda Winter Series.

The Royal Bermuda Yacht Club skipper is making his debut in the series and took advantage of yesterday’s practice day in the Great Sound to get reacquainted with sailing catamarans in the high-performance one-design M32.

“It’s the first time I have raced a catamaran in 25 years and we did pretty good in practice today,” Watson said.

“It took a couple of minutes to get the hang of this boat. But we communicated well and didn’t make any big mistakes and it was good day.

“We had a couple of good starts and a couple of okay starts and the fastest I saw on the speedo was 30 knots but we may have gone faster.

“I raced catamarans for many years a long time ago so the feel is the same although I am a little rusty. The boat accelerates faster but the feel is similar and fun.”

The battle for overall honours remains close with only a point separating leader Don Wilson and crew of Convexity from second placed Sally Barkow and her Magneta 32 team-mates who won the previous event in Bermuda last month.

“One point is very close and Sally has been sailing really well,” Wilson said. “She sailed really well in the last event and has spent a lot of time in the boat, and I have been spending a lot of time in the office so we will see how it goes.”

Wilson’s practice day was anything but smooth sailing as he broke his mast sailing upwind and will now compete in Hakan Svensson’s boat, Valhalla.

“We felt pretty good coming in but unfortunately our mast just broke,” Wilson said. “We were just sailing along the point and the mast broke in the middle and came down, so we will be racing on a different boat.”

This weekend’s races could potentially be held in Hamilton and not the Great Sound because of strong winds.

“That’s going to bring a new definition to short-track racing,” Watson said. “That could be kind of cool.”