Big Friday
Written by John Robertson | 01 December 2010
Well what a month, we trained a wee bit by ourselves early in October which was really good and managed to get quite a few hours in which is a bonus at this time of year! During the last few weeks we have also been hitting the old gymski hard and are all suffering with general soreness from working the guns to hard! But this all lead up to the Italian squad coming over and having a week of intense training with us on the water.
We normally have to get mates in or buy in sailors for the week to sail another boat against us but to have a quality team coming was really good news. The forecast for the week was quite breezy and a it happened it was like a hurricane on the Monday so we lost the first day but Tuesday was perfect and we got a load of pratice races in and thankfully we won all of them on that occasion, which was nice!
Wednesday was a day up at home for me at a family funeral which put our coach in the boat to take my place, this sounds weird but it works well as he can give the guys learning points direct and a different perspective on things.
As forecast it blew its old boots off on Thursday reaching 45knots if not more at times (mini hurricane) so another day of gym and painful massage from Sarah our soft tissue sports massage specialist. Painful but real good?!
BIG FRIDAY……
Wow, it all happened just as we were finishing our last practice race! We had done a load of races and different drills for about 2-3hours and were getting a bit chilly when had gone round our last windward mark to go back downwind to the finish line when a load of breeze came in from behind, which is normal. This breeze normally passes and you go back to your baseline wind(which today was 14knots) which was perfect for the days mission. This breeze decided to ramp up to about 28 knots then 35knots then 40+ eeeek!!! We had to ‘RUN AWAY’ before we got trashed against the French coast after being swept across the channel….!!
Ok slight exaggeration but you get the idea. While we were blasting our way back to the marina the ‘Italians’ were struggling a little bit as the forestay that holds the front of the mast in the boat became detached……..Oh dear!! By this time it was blowing ‘dogs off chains’ and we had a minor problem to sort out.
We despatched Hannah with Mark(coach) to assist the Italians, while all this was happening the breeze came up a few notches more and it was BOOMING by the time Steve and myself got our ship back to the marina and we waited and waited getting slightly concerned about the location of our buddies, in the end they got back to the marina safely if a little windswept and fully blown away by the excitement. Time then for a cuppa and a bit of flapjack from the café….. RELAX….phew.
Another great week of training was had by all, the next week was time to get a few sponsors gigs sorted before we flew out to StPetersburg (not Russia) near Tampa for some training and a event the following weekend.
As with a lot of things that had happened this month the excitement never stopped, After getting to Newcastle airport at 515AM to fly at 625AM I discovered that the snow had fallen again during the night (last Friday) and the airport was struggling to clear the taxiways and runway….!! Oh dear! But I had faith as the connection to the US of A was not until 1250pm……LOADS OF TIME!
As it happened they couldn’t get the taxiway cleared in time and then the lads took an hour to de-ice the plane and then some people didn’t turn up so the bags had to be removed. After all of this I of course missed the connection and had to spend a lovely night at the airport, not to bad but the doorway was quite hard to sleep on!! Just kidding, the hotel was just next to the terminal so it all worked out in the end.
Saying that we found out that our boat container is stuck in Miami as the efficient US customs chaps are being their usual crap selves so we are here in St Pete with no ship, she hopefully will turn up today with 3 other peoples boats which are also impounded, otherwise its more gym for us…..yaaaay.
That’s it for now so fingers crossed from the USA.
John