Delft, 4 March, 2010
What do you do if it is winter and you (only the students) have a holiday? Yes indeed, you go sailing! That’s why another training session of four days, Thursday till Sunday, was planned. Rikst (tactics/helm), Ralph (main/spi), Anton (main/spi/genua) and David (pitt) enjoyed their short three days break and were fit again for some nice sailing. Remko thought it would be nice to bring something from India, so he had to be replaced. The stand-ins for Remko were Gosse and David, both from the Delft Challenge team. During the last two days the team was filled with almost the complete Mumma Duck team, except for Rodny (who had a tough week in the south of France), with Pieter on the main/genua, Thijs on helm/tactics, Ties on genua/spi and Rob as the bowman.
The training plan was to start the first two days with some racing against Delft Challenge. The focus was on boat to boat handling during the first part of the days and more on speed training in the afternoon. Thanks to tactician Bert Schandevyl on Delft Challenge we managed to train 20 tacks and 10 jibes per minute. In other words: a exhaustive morning! We were a bit confused at the start of this fast boat handling round and had to get used to this handling speed. Finding out some tricks during fast tacks and jibes we could focus more on smooth boat handling, even during fast tack-battles.
The speed training part was more difficult, because our difference in training focus. Delft Challenge still wanted to train there inshore boat handling, which we are already quite happy with it. So we decided to spend the last two days on our own with practicing some offshore boat handling. Thijs planned a nice round on the Harinvliet, with a lot of reaching courses and some different peels. The changing wind conditions made it a good offshore training with the need to anticipate on different weather conditions. We were reminded by the fact that offshore racing is a completely different game than inshore racing. During the next few weeks we will have to improve our offshore sailing skills more and more.
The training session ended up on Sunday with a big storm coming over. With over 45 knots of wind in the harbor it was quite impressive to see. It makes you as sailor aware of the unforgivable character of the wind.
Next weekend another training session. This time in March!
Cheers,
MummaDuck
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