Europe Training Day at Loch Tummel Sailing Club
by Emma Brisley 5 May 2017 20:55 BST
29 April 2017
Europe Training Day at Loch Tummel © Chris Brisley
Ten sailors arrived at Tummel for our training day. 7 sailors were from Tummel, 3 sailors had travelled from further afield, Duncan from Wormit, Craig from Aberdeen and Stonehaven and myself from Dalgety Bay.
We ranged in ability from those who had recently bought a Europe and those who had been sailing one for many years. Jack from Loch Tummel had never been in a Europe but decided to take his daughters newly acquired boat out as she was not available and enjoyed his day sailing. Maybe we will see him out in his own Europe at some point in the future. Our coach for the day was Mark Barron a member of Tummel and very experienced coach. After a leisurely set up of the boats we had a briefing for the day and looked at sail setting before going afloat.
Once afloat we were working on our boat handling and thinking about our tacks and sail settings ensuring our leeches were not too tight down wind. We spent the morning sailing around a triangle, following the leader and tacking on the whistle. Having been sailing on the Forth for 6 years I had forgotten how interesting the wind can be on an inland lake, it went from being hardly anything to planing conditions within the space of a few minutes along with some lovely wind shifts too! It really made us concentrate and be aware of the wind to ensure we didn't capsize, however throughout the day there were a few capsizes.
At lunch, we talked about how things had gone in the morning and what we were going to be focusing on for the afternoon, starting and leeward mark rounding. We were all a little line shy to start with, then Mark had to do a few general recalls as we got a bit keen. The most exciting leeward mark rounding was the last one where Mark had us all following the leader initially before letting us go to race to it. This made us concentrate on our downwind sailing skills to get a good position to round the mark well and set us up for the beat. We finished with one last start and beat before heading in for the day.
Everyone had an enjoyable day improving our Europe sailing thanks to Mark, Loch Tummel for hosting the event and RYA Scotland for helping with some funding through the class grants.