Cadiz Camp
Written by Alain Sign | 23 December 2010
Over the last 10 days we have been out near Cadiz at Puerto Sherry, which is going to be our base for the rest of our winter training. It’s a really nice part of Spain where practically no one speaks English, but there is a lot of great food and the weathers not that bad either.
Dylan’s Dad was nice enough to volunteer/get roped into, driving the 2 49ers (ours and our training partners Chris and Peters), RYA rib and van out there so we got a couple of extra days off.
It was quite a quick turn around after Perth, we got home Friday and the following Friday we were in Cadiz!
We had a few small issue with all the snow around that almost postponed our trip for another day. Alain and Peter made the flight by the skin of there teeth and Chris had to get a plane the following day due to the trains not knowing if they were coming or going.
Once we were out there we got straight into some great sailing. The weather over there can be anything from 3 degrees up to 20 degrees and we had a bit of everything.
It makes training so much more productive than in the UK this time of year. The longer days, unfrozen ropes and hands that you can actually feel are an added bonus as well. We spent 5 days on the water before a rest day, with a good range of conditions.
After Perth we had a few areas that we really wanted to focus our attention at this first camp. We also had some new kit to test out, and its always nice to get to put a new mast of sail up!
After nice chilled out day off and some time in the gym we hit the water again. One thing there is no short of on the Atlantic coast is swell; we were hit with 8ft, 10 second swell and 15-20 knots! Awesome sailing conditions, we have not sailed in anything like that for a long time, it reminds us why we love the 49er. I will be busy trying to put a little edit together in between Christmas and new year.
The next 3 days we had a good bit of left over swell and a range of wind conditions, we continued to work on our goals for the camp and saw some real improvement which was great. Its sometimes hard to prove to your self that you have progressed forwards but the video just showed us exactly what we wanted to see.
We are now having a 3 week break over Christmas and New Year, then we start training on the 10th January when we get joined a few foreign teams. Luckily we made it home, at one point it was not looking good with our flight cancelled but we managed to get a flight to stansted and all was well.
We would both like to say a big thank you Dylan’s Dad, Graham for driving the boats out to Cadiz, our sponsors (Great Bear, Joules Clothing and Allen Bros) who make our campaign a reality. Hope you all have an awesome Christmas and Happy New Year.