A bad weather forecast did not dampen the enthusiasm for the first Youth Squad training session.
The weekend’s goals were set - maximising boat speed and perfecting communication. The morning’s sailing started at 10am, with a good amount of wind. Following a series of short races, we practised our starting procedures, with rolling starts. It ended on a rabbit start, which we used to observe the differences in boat speed. We concluded that we all had a similar boat speed, so mastering the tactics makes the crucial difference.
The afternoon had a general focus on communication, which we developed through tacking and gybing on the whistle. It culminated in a race in which to practice our newly developed techniques.
Sunday began with a heavy fog and no wind. So we started late with some running and exercises and then a talk on sail shapes back in the clubhouse (it was also really cold!). By 11:30, the wind had filled in and we were back on the water. We practised our tacking, in a ‘popular’ exercise called elephant ears. This ended up as ‘how close can you get to a rib before tacking’.
In the afternoon, we were joined by Tim Rush from North Sails, who had brought along some new shaped spinnakers for us to try. He watched how they performed, while we finished with some closely fought racing.
The next training session is January 17-18th, if it is as good as the last one; it’s to be highly recommended!
Click here for Gallery including testing new kites
