thanks for the reply.
Im not sure that I needed to change my drive geometry but the article did state not to format the FAT partion so I gave that a go. No luck, just one large partition. If you tell the installer sda1, in an attempt to direct it onto the first partion it dies ....looking for sda11 .
Anyway after repartitioning usb stick I found this helpful page.
http://wiki.debian.org/BootUsb