Cherub Autumn Blast at Queen Mary Sailing Club
by Martyn Denchfield 17 Oct 2019 22:23 PDT
12-13 October 2019
Boats started arriving on Saturday to a slightly damp and grey Queen Mary and a gentle 8 knots of breeze, EJ with Emma and Jimmy, Poppy with Jamie and Georgie, King Tubby with Martyn and Oliver, and The Spanish Inquisition.
We launched for a pleasant afternoon's sailing, initially just familiarising ourselves with our boats again before tracking down a couple of buoys on the lake and doing a very short windward leeward where we had to do a minimum of two tacks and gybes. Needless to say our boat handling is now greatly improved.
After a few of these we did a little bit of crew swapping between boats and helms swapping with crews to give experiences of different boats and to help crews realise just what helms have to go through - it's not all just sitting there and pointing the boat in the right direction!
We all came off the water very happy, bid farewell to The Spanish Inquisition, before heading off for a curry and a few drinks.
On Sunday we arrived down at the club to find that whilst it was still raining the wind had increased to a fairly steady 28 knots with gusts exceeding that. Usagi with Andy and Jill and Ronin with Julian and Helen joined us. We all stood bravely on the shore whilst we watched Usagi launch and decided that actually we would rather do some boat tinkering and drink tea instead.