The Victor Trophy at the Welsh Harp on 15 July was an opportunity to try ourselves against the rest of the Southern Travellers, and see how we were progressing towards our ultimate goal of doing the Nationals in August.
I must say that 13941 is as ready as she could be. We had a new split mainsheet installed recently, and the new sails from EXE are looking (and sailing) very good.
From my point of view, I don't think a change of sails should affect my sailing ability - I have far too much to learn about tacking on headers etc. for some new "cloth" to make a difference. However, I must admit that I feel, and perform, better with these new sails. Is it psychological? Probably - but I'll take it anyway.
Simon & I are also improving bit-by-bit - the spinnaker gybing is becoming second-nature, and we can fly through most conditions now. We probably need to improve our tacking a bit, and as always it is a matter of consistency. But progress is progress.
We had a reasonable start on the first race, and were mid-fleet up the first beat, but fowled Richard Lord on a port/starboard encounter. There was no contact, but I felt obliged to do 'turns', which meant that we were pushed back to the gaggle of boats who were sticking together (in some cases literally!) at the first and second marks. So we fell back and ended up with our normal 24th place out of 25.
After lunch, we again had a couple of reasonable starts (note to self - improve your starting at Poole in a couple of weeks time), and kept with the mid-fleet crowd.
The second race we were 19th and managed to be 18th in the final race, close behind George Rogers of Tollesbury in 13939.
Progress is slow, but keep working...
Next stop is Poole on 30th July - harbour sailing in a triangle-sausage course. Looking forward to it.
I'll try to send regular updates from this blog as we gear up for the Nationals in August.
No comments:
Post a Comment