Hi guys,
Hope you all enjoyed the weekend. I thought as a group we got a lot out of the weekend. Thought we all got pushed out of our comfort zone. The areas we covered were:
Decision making – thought it went well. A really important part of sailing, the decisions we make define the races. Ultimately these decisions will make the difference between winning and losing. Not that simple so hope it didn’t go over you head. Sailing is the most challenging sport in the world because of all the different skill you need. You need to be good at all of them! Bit disappointed that you were not making notes as there was a huge amount of information given. I couldn’t remember all that if I was you. You must all be super intelligent. I thought so, most northern people are! If you could write down the key areas in your folder, just so that you can come back to them in the future. I will re-visit this next time and see how many of you remembered and how many should have written stuff down! Please have a think about the down wind decisions; where they are and what they might be.
Spinnaker work – again I thought this came on well. Unfortunately, for most of you it was the systems that you down. This is not a problem at the moment because that is what training is all about. However, it does become a problem if you don’t do anything about it and when I see you next or more importantly at the ET or national qualifiers when it lets you down. A great example of this came with Lilly and Bex (ex north west squad) at the worlds. The shackle broke on the clue, attaching the sail to the boom. As you can appreciate that is game over and race lost. A bit of a problem when you only have one discard in the whole series. We highlighted this to them in the de-briefing as being there responsibility. Remember that 99.9% of things going wrong are your fault. Not bad luck and not your parents fault even if they did rig it then you should check it. You should have a safety rope on the clue and round the eye on the boom so that you can still sail if the shackle breaks. They didn’t listen and put another old shackle on, only to go out racing and the same thing happened the next day. Fortunate for them it was before the race and I had spare rope. They then had the best race of there championship!!! Think that says it all.
PLEASE PLEASE make the relevant changes to your boat. I have highlighted them to you time and time again. I just don’t want a controllable factor to get in the way of you winning races. Remember what we said about 1:4. For every four hours on the water 1 hour is spent on the boat. At Olympic level its 1:1 and even 1:2 in some cases. It can make the difference!
We didn’t get chance to look at tacking or mark rounding. We will cover that at the next squad weekend. Could you all have a think about a rule scenario or sailing scenario that you don’t understand, and then bring it with you to the next squad weekend. We will cover that initially! Please bring 2 or more with you.
Good luck with your sailing over the next few weeks. Remember it is more important to have 1 hour of quality (SMART) sailing on the water than 4 hours just sail!!!
Regards
