Our first Nacra camp
Written by Tom Phipps | 22 January 2013
I am now nearly back home in Cornwall, and I thought it was time to do a bit of a wrap up of the first winter training camp in Spain.
The trip started with a surprisingly uneventful road trip given the two people put in charge of it (myself and John Gimson). After leaving Cornwall we travelled from Southampton to Holland to collect the new boat , and then on through France to Spain and down to Murcia. T
he first few days in Spain we filled with putting the new boats together which on the whole went relatively smoothly. I think Lucy learnt a lot about catamarans in the rigging stage as it was a very new experience for her.
Once the boats were built, the first half of the camp was sailed in mostly light winds, But moving into the second half the breeze picked up and the boats took off! We quickly found the limitations of the new boards and went through two quickly. Nacra are already working on producing a mk2 board that should last a little longer than 30 minutes of heavy wind sailing. Other than the failures, the boats were very good fun to sail we had a number of wheelies or as have started calling them whoopsies!
As our time in Spain drew to an end, many of the teams left making our training more focused on boat handling rather than speed testing.
The trip home was also quite eventful, due to the oh-so-predictable British weather the snow delayed our flight and made the drive quite exciting as well.
I am currently in Bristol weathering the storm and spending some time with a friend but will back to Cornwall tomorrow. I can't wait, I am NOT a city boy!