IT’S BEEN one of the hardest decisions of my life but last week I decided to call time on my sailing career after an amazing 12 years.

At the start of this campaign I knew what needed to be done and I knew it would be hard but achievable with a new class of boat, team and coach.

However, what I had no idea about was motherhood and how hard that would be and how much it would affect me mentally and physically, which at the end of the day meant I couldn’t give enough time and energy to my sailing.

Despite all the incredible support, help and understanding I have received over the past year, as Saskia Clark and I put together our 2012 campaign, it got to the point where I needed to ramp everything up another gear and it wasn’t a gear I had.

I felt I was hindering Saskia, who is an exceptional talent, and I desperately didn’t want to do that.

After a slightly disappointing result in Miami I sat down and looked at our programme and what needed to be done in the time we had left to the all-important trials.

As it was we would be heavily relying on everything coming together for the trials simply because of my short time in the 470 boat and the amount of time we’ve been sailing together.

I love hard work but, for me there came a point when I was doing everything I could do and not spending time with my son, yet still needing to be fitter, stronger and generally better at sailing and racing a 470 . . . something had to give. It’s not a decision I could make overnight, sailing’s been my whole life.

Nick (Dempsey, Sarah’s husband) and I discussed it at length.

He’s seen me going through a pretty dreadful time and we both decided that now was the right time to move on.

In some ways I feel I need to rebuild my relationship with Thomas.

I don’t regret the time I had with Saskia because both she and Joe (Glanfield, the girls’ coach and double Olympic 470 silver medallist) have been incredible to work with.

But when it came to crunch time I couldn’t make the sacrifices required to give us the best shot of 2012 success and for that reason it was best that Saskia can move forward with her goal of winning in Weymouth without me.

It’s been a very emotional week because once I’d made the decision to retire there were a lot of people, like sponsors and long-term supporters I needed to tell and thank including Volvo Car UK, QuIC Financial Technologies, Paynes Hicks Beach and Three60 Sports Management and Mirabaud, Highland Heritage and Lynx, as well as Paul Brotherton.

I really would still love to be involved in 2012 in some way – it’s a massive thing for this country to have the Olympics and if I can use my experience to help other sailors going into the Games in any way that would be great.

But now I’m looking forward to just switching off and spending some time with my boys, Nick and Thomas, in Brazil where Nick is training at the moment.

Supporting him in his campaign to win 2012 gold, and raising our son, is now where my all energies will be going.

* Read more team blogs at rya.org.uk/supportcrew/TeamBlog/