Well the gods shone on us again and provided excellent weather for early April and for the two-day training session at Seasalter SC. The high winds of Friday were still trailing on Saturday morning but by delaying the sailing start for an hour the last of the F6 gusts disappeared and we had a sunny afternoon of F3-4 with a few gusts. On Sunday, whilst a little more hazy we enjoyed the steady F3-4 SW winds for the whole sailing session. On Saturday morning, by the time Nick Dewhirst arrived, we had the twelve boats attending (7 from SSC and 5 visitors) rigged and lined up abeam in the field for inspection, by Nick Dewhirst, Kevin Dutch and Steve Willis. Then on to discussion of the key points for trimming and fettling a boat for good performance. A quick resume by each of the helms elicited that most had some reasonable experience of sailing Sprint 15s but Mark Dowling, whilst an experienced sailor, had only purchased his Sprint over the winter and rigged it for the first time that morning. Whilst most had experienced capsizes several had not and this was potentially causing them to be more conservative with their sailing. Racing tactics were of clear interest to most. The three hour pre-sailing session revealed that most boats needed some tweaking particularly to foot straps and rudders with some demonstrations of how to improve boat handling by judicious tensioning and arrangement of the footstraps. A good few rudders were wrongly assembled and had worn or missing frame pads. With the tide in the winds were still showing some gusts and the fleet set afloat to do circuits in line rather than the normal short races. Martin Searle joined Jane Bainbridge on her boat to provide some one to one encouragement whilst Nick Dewhirst, Kevin Dutch and Mark Hollis patrolled the fleet to provide hints and tips on the best rig set up for each leg. Unfortunately towards the end we had one mishap with Rob Finch suffering a sudden gybe which took him straight into the forard port hull of Andy Carter and led to bow damage and a few other scrapes on both boats. With both having hulls filling with water they had to be brought ashore and Andy’s boat was out of action until it can be repaired. Following a shower, drink and debrief of the sailing Nick and Steve introduced the floor game in the club house to simulate the annual Seasalter long distance Fowley Island Race – and it special wind shifts and hazards. The hazards were only being introduced at stages during the game – much to the annoyance of those who thought they were sailing clear ahead on the best possible course!. The helms soon learnt to listen to course instructions and to watch for the wind changes – plus learning to try and find out local vagaries causing wind shifts even under steady wind conditions – due to the local terrain and the southern sea wall. The unfortunate ‘grounding’ of two boats at Fowley Island led to further changes to the fleet order. The key messages imparted were understand the course instructions, find out what you can about local wind and tide conditions and anticipate what other boats around you may do and take early action to avoid being forced off your chosen course. An excellent three course evening meal provided by Lesley Stafford and Jane Mills was followed by a further floor exercise of getting ready at the start and sailing to the windward mark – with lots of discussion about rights of way and again anticipation of possible conflicts of courses sailed. Having had a long day – especially for those that set out early in the morning - the evening finished with most people heading off to bed or a quiet drink in the bar. Sunday morning saw Rob Finch making liberal application of Duck tape to his starboard bow and repairing his trolley that fell apart in sympathy with the boat whilst Steve Willis carried on doing individual boat inspections with their helms. Then using Andy Bunyan’s boat fully rigged in the field Nick Dewhirst then demonstrated the recommended use of main and traveller sheets and the sail and bridle tell tales. As soon as the tide was up the fleet set sail with Rob Smith using Kevin Dutch’s boat instead of the SSC club boat that needed some TLC to the traveller and a new tiller. The order of the day was to do as many single lap races as possible starting with a forced starboard start through varying angles of start line bias giving some interesting variations of starboard and port starts in the fleet. Despite the generally steady winds capsize practice occurred for a number in the fleet. Kevin accompanied Andy Bunyan and Derek Darley for a while and forced a capsize to give Andy his first experience – which he later repeated alone for good measure. Jane even admitted that the reason that she capsized was because she was watching John’s sailing, Ian just forgot to hold his sheets all the time. During the successive races the fleet order changed time and again with most helms having good and bad races and some interesting meeting and calls at the windward mark of port and starboard boats. It was apparent that some boats, and helms, need some more tweaking particularly for windward sailing with the highest boats sailing some 10-20o higher than the lowest. Mark Dowling’s boat was clearly able to point high with him achieving a single leg to the windward mark on one start. Unfortunately he did also learn that the catamarans do not turn as quick as monohulls and he managed to scrape one bow taking action to a ‘starboard’ call and not quite avoiding Rob Smith’s rudder. By the end of sailing the weekend’s sun showed on nearly everyone’s face and everyone had had some good and not so good points to comment on their own performance at the final debriefing. For most it was a new experience sailing on the traveller rather than the main sheet to keep the sail shape and with footstraps pulled outboard a few found that not using hiking pants can lead to some painful bruises to the upper thighs once you really get hiked out. At the debriefing it was clear that everyone had enjoyed the weekend and had learnt some new things. There should be much fiddling with rudders and footstraps over the next week or so as well. Unknown to the fleet Steve Willis was taking videos of the boats sailing on Sunday, from the SSC race tower, and will be editing the tapes to hopefully provide each helm with some footage of their own sailing and to make some CDs for future training sessions. Meanwhile Mark Hollis was taking photos around the fleet from one of the patrol boats and will post them on the Sprint 15 website. The visitors enjoyed SSC and we hope that they will return – maybe for the July TT meeting or just to join in the SSC club racing at another time. Whilst not everyone is mentioned above Nick, Kevin and I would like to thank all who turned up for the weekend - we enjoyed your company - and especially all the SSC members who helped out in the club house and on the water – the event was only possible with their assistance. The happy band attending were:
Steve Willis  The motley crew  Line up of boats for inspection  on the beach briefing |
