RS Feva - Training at Bough Beech

by Bill Tucker on 9 Feb 2011 RS Feva - The South Zone Squad were at Bough Beech this last weekend for what turned into a very breezy weekend. We managed to get sailing both morning and afternoon on each day which was really impressive considering the constant 18 knots we had everyday and gusts in the high 20s at times. The focus of the weekend was speed, which was quite ironic considering this was the first weekend the squad had breeze.

On Saturday we began by simply having a small course and some of the sailors would do starting exerices with me (Chris) while the three boats would do speed runs with James using the full length of the lake. This worked well and the sailors did really well with each exercise. Then Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning we decided to use the windy conditions to really work on boat handling and downwind sailing with the focus being on apparent wind sailing. Everyone seemed to grasp each exercise really well. Although there were a lot of capsizes the sailors kept at it really well.

Sunday afternoon blew up a lot and an extended lunch and long debrief on the morning session ensued allowing the breeze to die off enough to allow us to go and do three championships races. Both James and myself were really impressed with the standard. The improvement and the enthusiasm throughout the weekend was very impressive and considering we didn't expect to get much sailing in after viewing the forecast earlier in the week we actually had one of our most productive weekends. Let's hope we can carry that on in a months time at Spinnaker!

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