It ended up being a lot more than that.
The coach was Niki Birrell. Niki is a para- Olympian, and he clearly knows about a huge amount about sailing.
Yesterday, we heard about sailing "in the groove" - that state where the boat sails fast and everything is being managed properly in a routine manner. I think it is fair to say that for the first 20 minutes today we were decidedly NOT "in the groove". Maybe I was thinking too much about my lunch, or maybe we just needed to get our "sea legs" back again. Some small mistakes were made. However, we did finally settle down.
Wind was again 11 to 15 knots, although more Northerly, and with shallower waves compared with yesterday.
We started out with a "follow my leader", having to hoist and gybe the spinnaker on demand.
The next exercise was a set of windward / leeward races, with a conventional starting line.
By now, we had a routine for the Beat in these conditions:
So we pushed hard upwind. Then Niki appears behind us in the coaching RIB. He shouts out "more kicker!". What ?? Can my new EXE sails handle that leech tension? Come to think of it, the effect of the kicker is to bend the mast, and mine is probably 10 years old. But we rammed on more kicker - Niki was right, of course.
Then we did some (slightly chaotic!) gate starts, with one of us acting as the "pathfinder".
At the end of the session, I felt we were getting ourselves "in the groove". The boat was feeling fast. We won't be able to win any prizes, but I am confident we can give a good account of ourselves in the coming week.
The end-of-day de-brief was a really helpful way to consolidate lessons learnt.
Tomorrow is a full Practice Race, followed by the first race of the 2017 National Championships.
GP14 no 13941 looks impressive in her race sponsorship stickers and tally number "7".
We are ready.
Yesterday, we heard about sailing "in the groove" - that state where the boat sails fast and everything is being managed properly in a routine manner. I think it is fair to say that for the first 20 minutes today we were decidedly NOT "in the groove". Maybe I was thinking too much about my lunch, or maybe we just needed to get our "sea legs" back again. Some small mistakes were made. However, we did finally settle down.
Wind was again 11 to 15 knots, although more Northerly, and with shallower waves compared with yesterday.
We started out with a "follow my leader", having to hoist and gybe the spinnaker on demand.
The next exercise was a set of windward / leeward races, with a conventional starting line.
By now, we had a routine for the Beat in these conditions:
- Kicker: on hard
- Cunningham: on hard
- Outhaul: tight out
- Boom in as tight as possible
- Hike out hard
- Work the waves
So we pushed hard upwind. Then Niki appears behind us in the coaching RIB. He shouts out "more kicker!". What ?? Can my new EXE sails handle that leech tension? Come to think of it, the effect of the kicker is to bend the mast, and mine is probably 10 years old. But we rammed on more kicker - Niki was right, of course.
Then we did some (slightly chaotic!) gate starts, with one of us acting as the "pathfinder".
At the end of the session, I felt we were getting ourselves "in the groove". The boat was feeling fast. We won't be able to win any prizes, but I am confident we can give a good account of ourselves in the coming week.
The end-of-day de-brief was a really helpful way to consolidate lessons learnt.
Tomorrow is a full Practice Race, followed by the first race of the 2017 National Championships.
GP14 no 13941 looks impressive in her race sponsorship stickers and tally number "7".
We are ready.
Good luck and let "the groove" be with you. Michal
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