Sarah Blanck Sails off to China on a VSail-Trainer

by John Mooney on 22 Jul 2008 Sarah Blanck, Australia's sailor in the Laser Radial at the 2008 Olympics, was recently in her home city Melbourne for final preparations and to say her goodbyes to family and friends before heading off to China for the big event.

When she wasn't speaking to school children or attending official openings like Yachting Victoria's new state of the art training centre "The Boat Shed", Sarah was keeping her skills and fitness routine going sailing a VSail-Trainer. "Sarah could not have come at a better time", says coach John Mooney. "We were in need of some new fitness data and what could be better than an Olympic sailor in their final preparation stages. We got our information and Sarah got to go sailing in the middle of winter in a "China acclimatised" room, without even getting wet or sailing in Algae".

Sarah used her VSail training for fitness, sailing techniques and tactics. Virtual sailing were able to looking closely at some hiking strap issues and leg loadings (Tibialis Anterior) in hiking and also some differing hand transfer methods in conjunction with effective hiking and accurate steering out of tacks.

Sarah was keen to have a final close up look at herself sailing before heading to China. She even dressed in her sailing gear including wetsuit, booties and lifejacket to ensure a realistic re-production on the VSail-Trainer. "I like to lose myself on the simulator like I am sailing out on the water and I find dressing in my sailing gear helps that" says Sarah. "I treat a VSail-Trainer session as seriously as any on water sailing that I do" she added.

Naturally Sarah was very interested in the Virtual Sailing staff running some velocity prediction programs through the computer for her with differing displacements (crew weight) and in various wind strengths.

Virtual Sailing are not at liberty to discuss any information with regard to the findings and being perfect gentlemen we would never discuss the weight of a lady.