It never blows from the North West
Written by Dylan Fletcher | 26 October 2011
We had a long camp down in Weymouth, Thursday to Thursday with day off from sailing on Monday after the National Ranker. Safe to say we did quite a bit of sleeping over the weekend and none at all in the World Class Day on friday.
Things are really starting to ramp up with our preparations for the Worlds that start in about 7 weeks time. We spent a lot of this camp looking at windy boathandling and starting, it should be a bit breezy in Perth to say the least with the Doctor arriving promptly most days. The ‘Doctor’ is sea breeze that develops most days in summer down in Perth, which is normally always at the windy end.
The Ranker was tricky with light SE on the first day and NW on the second before finishing in a SW sea breeze. So with a bit of everything and everything being a bit tricky we sailed a little to conservatively and ended up 2nd overall to Pink/Peacock. Nice work to them, they sailed really well all weekend.
The rest of the training went really well for us and we feel like its starting to come together now. To finish the week off we had a 3 races series with a twist and the winner taking £100! Basically it was 2 races on the water followed by a core fitness test and 2k team row. We won the first race and had a bit of confusion about the finish line in the second race with finish 2nd. The first core test went ok and we ended up 3rd overall so it was all about the 2k row. For the row we both did two 500m stints with the change over being key. We were neck and neck with Dave/Ed through the whole row and going into the final 500m we had small 6m lead. It was so close right up until I blew up, I just had nothing left and we ended up a couple of seconds behind them at the finish. Whilst this was going on Peacock had put the hammer down to come from 16m down to a half a second ahead of Dave/Ed to win the 2k row.
Adding the scores from the sailing we took the £100, a nice feeling after the disappointment of the weekend. After feeling awful after the row and nearly being sick I thought it would be a good idea to play some 5 a side football.
The next day (friday) was our annual World Class Day, a fun filled day with various talks and activities. The most exciting one being the kite challenge, each group got given a bag with 6 bits of wood, some glue, tape, knife, pens, whipping twine (lines), plastic and kite material with the challenge of making a kite.
We had quite of a lot planning but it all paid off, we made a 2 line stunt kite that actually worked! Well up to the point that the line snapped, but we were pretty surprised how well it worked. We got beaten in the competition due to our lack or artistic impression or something along those lines. Anyway it was by far the best flying kite...
So normal services resumes with this weeks camp starting on Tuesday, so time to get all the admin, boat work and some gym done today!
Big thanks to all our supporters and sponsors once again.