On the 16th and 17th of November we held our first of six squad weekends at Yorkshire Dales Sailing Club.
Saturday
When we first arrived it was difficult to open the car door because of the wind strength. After this I went and put my kit in the changing room to discover the heated floor. Those were the first two highlights of the weekend!
We then had a briefing with Dave, Sarah and Emma in the training room. We had a change of plan for the day due to the heavy wind, we decided on tacking on the whistle and a simple course. Once the briefing was over we rushed (kind of) to get the boats ready and get changed.
Once on the water we had a bit of a blast around and a go with the spinnakers, one of which *cough* George and Alexander *cough* had been rigged the wrong way up...
We then did our tacking on the whistle exercise and practiced our tacking with the crews facing backwards, which I have to say is a lot easier!
We then went in and had a good lunch and warmed up with hot chocolate, also perfecting our table football skills.
Back out in the breeze we had a lot of fun flying around the course with a fair number of capsizes, Grimworth Reservoir is really cold! After a few duckings most chickened out of spinnakers!
After we had all headed in, changed and put the boats away we had a debrief and watched some funny videos of the bottom of Dave's rib and every now and then an odd wave.
We then had a lovely meal, followed by some team games which the girls won because obviously they are the best, and DON'T cheat!
Sunday
Sadly on Sunday we had no wind at all in the morning but we still had a busy morning ashore, including a 45 minute fitness session with Emma which was really fun despite how tiring it was!
We did lots of different activities in the morning including a tyre game (which I'm not going to explain how it works because I am really bad at explaining things), ladders (ditto) and some theory in the training room with Dave.
After a great lunch we finally got on the water with a tiny bit of wind and completed four races, one of which was a crews' race. They were quite good races although overall the wind strength was pretty rubbish!
Once ashore we had a weekend de-brief in which Dave stuck to tradition and handed out WILD AND WHIPPY chocolate bars!!!!
Overall it was a packed weekend with great catering and hospitality from Yorkshire Dales SC, and we all had a great time even though the wind wasn't exactly on our side.
Report by Abi Thornley
