UKLA 4.7 Training Datchet water

28 Sailors turned up to Datchet water, for the second UKLA 4.7 Class training, despite severe weather warnings for much of the UK! The training has a different racing theme for each of the 5 weekends culminating with a coach supported race weekend, at the ESSO championships.
Andrew was joined by assistant coaches Clare Chapple and Matt Goodbourn, who together focused the training around the main theme of tactics and boathandling around Mark roundings, but with winds touching 25 knts at points, windy weather boathandling was a big part of the training too!
With a building forecast on Saturday, the sailors hit the water straight away to take advantage of the lighter conditions first thing. The sailors were put through there paces on tight courses designed to put the pressure on there markroundings, and as the wind increased towards 25 knts before lunch time, all types of boathandling was put to the test. Star performer of the morning was Cameron who seemed to love the heavy winds, but everyone improved massively by pushing themselves in the strong conditions. The sailors then together broke down the skills required for a good windward and leeward mark rounding over the lunch debrief, before heading back out for the afternoon to put there ideas into practice. The afternoon, consisted of more around the course exercises with 2 sailors breaking off with 1 coach for some specific 1 on 2 coaching.

Sunday dawned with a consistent 22knts on the water, but with big gusts coming across the lake. The sailors and coaches therefore decided to use the morning for theory and then having a early lunch and long afternoon session on the water. A mixture of topics were covered including some rules of thumb wind strategy, correct setup and technique for different wind strengths and a great session from Clare and Matt on what the sail controls actually do to a rigged 4.7 sail inside the classroom…..
The afternoon was very productive with a mixture of races and exercises using the length of the lake, with the sailors split into two groups. Probably the biggest improver of the afternoon was Melissa, who really improved her upwind sailing after starting to use the sail controls properly to depower her sail.

The 3rd Open 4.7 training weekend on the 10th and 11th of December, is open to any UKLA member, and will focus on Boatspeed and starting skills across the weekend.

4th place for GAC PIndar in Almeria!

Well the light winds of france followed the tour to spain.... Almeria went very well for the team, leading at the halfway stage and finally finishing in 4th overall.
The racing was a mix of stadium racing inside the port and outside windward leeward style courses. With Mischa back on mainsheet, myself in my favoured crewing role of trim we were joined by Brad on the bow. Brad had sailed the first event of the season where the boat struggled to perform, so was as delighted as the rest of us to hold the lead after day 3. We lost count of how many races we sailed, but in the generallly downwind/reaching starts, we had really found a strength, great starts made boat speed and tactics easy and we moved from around 7th to 1st in one day.
Day 4 was not so good for us, An OCS and some boathanding errors in the course racing outside meant a bad start to the day, which proved to be one of the longest in the series history with around ten races sailed over a 6 hour period on the water.... Suffice to say we did not spend much time debriefing the day, instead eating then hitting the hay!
So going into the last day we had slipped back to 8th overall, but with very tight points between all of the teams. We again started with w/l course racing outside. We started brilliantly with 2 firsts and a second on the offshore race course. Returning inside the port again, for the growing crowds, the format again switched back to downwind starts. We sailed really well with a 7,3,10,2,4 scoreline giving us a 2 points win over Groupe edmond de rothchild and 4th place overall.
The tour now moves to Singapore for the conclusion to the 2011 series, and we go there with a bit of belief that we can get onto the podium for the last event which would be a great way to end the year.

Apologies for lack of updates - 2011 summary

Well 2011 started badly for me with a small operation to remove an infection caused by an ingrowing hair?! the operation did not go as planned and led to around 5 months of enforced inactivity.... (Which explains the lack of news for the first half of this year!).
During this time i was able to go coaching carefully at the weekends! working again with the excellent rya north zone feva squad who went on to dominate at the Eric Twiname Championships and helping out with the 4.7 NJS who i coached at there European championships in Holland during July before doing another road trip down to La Rochelle for the Laser radial youth Worlds. I have great memories form La Rochelle where i finished 4th myself (despite laeding for much of the week) at a Radial Worlds and also being the venue Myself and Ed first qualified for the Olympic Performance squad in the Tornado. The Sailors did great with a number of top tens and podium finishers in the different categories, if we had had a touch more wind i think they would have destroyed the opposition.
I also had some fun coaching the RYA's new womens skiff program in the RS800, the weekends were generally brease on so there were some great capsizes to watch! but was great to see the quick progression by everyone....

Luckilly for me i was all healed up by June as i was asked to do mainsheet on GAC Pindar at the fourth event of the extreme 40 world series in Boston. Having always helmed in the past this was obviously going to be a challenge switching roles but despite leaking hydraulics (there were beats where i had to just continually pump to keep the main in the same palce.. not great) i did a fairly good job and was asked to crew for the rest of the 2011 series. The team was new to the series so were pleased to finish off the bottom of the pile for this event.
Next up was Cowes... This went brilliantly for us, Mischa Heemskerk joined the team on mainsheet with me switching to Jib trim and tactics, Ian Williams continually improving on the helm and Jono Macbeth on Bow. We were a relatively heavy and strong team, Jono in particular helped make up for me still being below usual fitness levels. Great boat handling and speed meant we made the best of some good starting and tactical calls in the mainly windy week, 6 days of racing in those boats is crazy hard! We were pleased to finish in 6th place overall and the sponsors were obviously delighted to see the big improvement in results infront of there guests.
Trapani (Sciliy) followed on in september, the start of a very full on 6 weeks for the extreme 40 teams, with 3 events in that very short period. Mischa had prior comitements so i switched back to mainsheet, with PG from italy Ed from Aus coming in on trim and bow. We never really got going, so many changes to the crew all at once took its toll and we finished in 8th place.
After a couple of days back home and a brilliant time at the Richmond - Blair wedding it was staright back to building the 40 again in Nice france. This became one of the most frustrating events ive sailed in the extreme 40's, very light winds in the afternoon led to early starts in the morning to get 3-4 races in, in the drainage winds. Maybe an hour back at the hotel, before lunch and then back out for some very light shifty races over the coirse of a long afternoon waiting for the occasional puff of wind! we had moments of brilliance in the light stuff, but seemed of the pace in the morning races and altough close to the middle of the front runners we ended up in 8th again.
Next up Almeria.....