UKCRA Youth National Spitfire Squad RYA Training at the WPNSA
by Sam Rowell 18 Mar 2015 09:54 GMT
14-15 March 2015
A trip down to the Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy is a must for any class training. The 12 sailors made the trip down early on Saturday morning with others living further afield driving down on Friday afternoon. A cold and breezy welcome made setting up the six boats an experience I'm sure most of us would like to forget.
10.30am arrived and the squad joined RYA Catamaran Coach Paul Wakelin and Ollie Greber in Training Room 3. The focus of the weekend was to be holding, implementation of the golden rules and some compass work. After a swift briefing and a trip to the changing rooms boats finally started to hit the water. The first exercise was holding next to a mark and then reversing back past the mark before tacking and holding alongside the mark on the opposite tack. Second exercise focused on trigger pulls. With boats lined up across the wind trigger pulls on the whistle was the name of the game. Once everyone was up to speed another whistle for a tack before repeating the exercise on the opposite tack. Once the confines of the protective harbour walls were reached it was time for a blast downwind with gybing on the whistle back to the Academy.
With an RYA lunch laid on and a rebrief of the afternoons exercises the boats headed out for a second session of holding, trigger pulls and time/distance work. Once boats packed away and tied down for the night the sailors sat down for a meal together before having a final hours discussion on compass work.
An earlier 9am start on Sunday looked to put the holding practice into play with some practice starts. The group paired up for short match races and most teams got to race one another which lead for some great boat on boat action with some interesting starts. In the afternoon a rolling 9 minute gun (3 x 3 minutes) started a series of longer championship style races. The windward was set about 200m from the start and in moderate swell judging laylines was a challenge. With the wind building and after some spectacular capsizes and pitchpoles some teams called it a day and left the race area. For the remaining teams the racing became much more competitive.
The final race saw Sam Rowell and Dan Smith battling it out against James King and Eddie Bridle. With both teams lining up for the start James and Eddie were hard pushed to find room at the committee boat end of the line. Both teams banged left on the first lap before James and Eddie pulled away as Sam and Dan were knocked off the trapeze by the heavy waves. Eddie remained on the wire for the windward mark rounding allowing James to get the spinnaker up asap. Sam and Dan took the starboard side of the course for the downwind leg which put them back in the game. Both teams took opposite sides of the leeward gate and after 20 minutes of racing again arrived neck and neck at the windward mark. Sam and Dan took the starboard side again and surfed the swell through the finish line to snatch victory and to win the flapjack trophy.
The squad packed up and were debriefed before parting ways after what had been the last of this years Winter Training. Massive thanks to Ollie and Paul and we all look forward to starting training again later in the year. Thank you to all the parents who also braved the conditions in the support rib and to Iain Philpott for another batch of fantastic photos.