RS Aero Youth Winter Training at Rutland Sailing Club
by RS Aero UK Class Association 10 Jan 09:45 GMT
5-6 January 2019
RS Aero Youth Winter Training at Rutland © Ross Harvey
The RS Aero UK Youth Winter training visited Rutland for its third weekend in its series of six weekends over this winter. New additions to the regular coaching team this weekend were George Cousins, who finished third at last summer's RS Aero 9 World Champs in Weymouth, and James Parker-Mowbray.
The Rutland training weekend, together with the Weymouth weekend in March, are open for additional entries including both adults and youths to join the Rooster Youth Team. This produced 35 sailors in total at Rutland, an increase facilitated by the extra coaches.
Thanks to team member, Alice Lucy, for her summary: This weekend's focus was on general tactics and boat on boat tactics, together with the related general boat handling and start line boat handling to provide the necessary skills to achieve the aim. The coaches for the weekend were Ross Harvey, Hannah Bristow, Liam Willis, George Cousins and James Parker-Mowbray.
On Saturday there were very light winds so we focused on light wind boat handling. We did lots of tacking and gybing as well as a 'river channel' exercise, to put what we had practised into a confined and more pressured situation. This really helped everyone as it gave more realistic situations to our racing.
On Sunday we focused on start line boat handling, specifically on swooping and double tacks. This was really effective and we all learnt lots. We ended the weekend with a series of races where you could get promoted or demoted with the aim to climb to the top of the series - premier league style. Everyone really enjoyed this due to the races being short thus making the starts very important. We put into practice what we learnt.
A couple of the adults joining the weekend mentioned how impressed they were of the quality of sailing and also the attitude of the young sailors. Nic Willcocks was a parent who jumped at the opportunity to join the training at Rutland, and commented, "As a father who now loses to his daughter, thanks largely to the RS Aero youth training, I was privileged to sail and train with the youths this weekend. I would like to thank Rutland for their great hospitality and all the coaches for their hugely helpful tips, explanations and encouragement and also their bravery in attempting some of the fun games that evolved on Saturday evening! A great weekend and a credit to RS and all involved."
The RS Aero Winter calendar is in full swing with racing and training fixtures almost every week. The next training weekend is at Datchet, West London, over 9/10 Feb. Prior to that the RS Aero Rooster Youth Team will seek to put into practice their new skills at the Bloody Mary, Steve Nicholson Trophy and Tiger Trophy in the meantime!
Check out the whole RS Aero UK Event List at www.rsaerosailing.org/index.asp?p=events&rg=UK