Training Weekend - Queen Mary SC

[Tim Noyce]

It sounds excellent Pete, I am most jealous of all involved. Please take lots of pics and videos to make me extra jealous when I return to work on Tuesday.

[Stuberry]

I am really looking forward to this!

[andy_peters]

Shore demo with a feather weight.  That has Peters written all over it.  Jill though not me 

[roland_trim]

Jill, Hayley, Lara and of course Eddie - A bunch of lightweights, each of whome could drink me under the carpet at the moment.

Born slippy is sitting at BGM and I am jest desperate to get wet. Will try as hard as to be there and rigged by 10.30.

[Will_Lee]

Wow! What a weekend. I am all-over broken.

Thanks to Pete and to QMSC for having us. I think everyone came away having learnt loads - I know we did.

[phil_kirk]

Am jealous but we had a good race to Le Harve in which we were the 5th boat round the Needles Fariway mark, leading our class on the water. We then had an 80 mile reach in 8-10 knot winds.  Anoyingly the Asymetric rigged boats lapped up the conditions and our general purpose asymetric flown from the spinnaker pole was not a match for theirs.  We still managed 18th in a 106 boat fleet so happy with the result.

I hope all Pete's training doesn't pay off too quickly but glad you had a good weekend.

 

[Graham Bridle]

Yes, thanks to Pete for giving up his time to help us all, even though we only made the rather windless saturday we still talked loads in the car home about what we'd seen and learnt, so all good !

Oh, and eddie won his footie gane 2-1 so even better, and we spent today BH monday blasting around Brightlingsea in a F3-4, not particularly fast around a course but blooming fast in a line !

This time next year rodders.

[roland_trim]

I am all-over broken.

The crew of Born Slippy are both a little sore today. We topped off the weekend with a gentle cruise on the Medway.  The training weekrend was excellent. Pete nursed us through the basics of starting, reminded all to drive the nose in when pulling away and provided some excellent 1-1 coaching with video backup. Next year if we can arrange another simialr session we will be there.

Monday's Medway trip was less fun. The google shot below shows approximately the mother of all windward/leward courses, starting with the downhill section first. The google logo is approximately 1 mile long.

The grommet holding the uppers on at the bottom of the mast failed at the Red dot, a loud bang with kite full and only the 800's ahead of us. Hayley's lash-up, using the king post as a connection point, seemed to work so we continued down wind (mach 1-2). After overtaking the 29ers again there was another loud bang (Green dot) as both of the starboard spreaders snapped.  Cause of failure was probably down to the uppers rotating through the lash up and friction at the spreader tip bending them off. Although they may have been mushed by the first failure. Can now definitely say my mast tip is very strong and very flexible.

After looking at the rig, we decided that after going all that way we'd be better to finish the race. So noddied down to  the downwind mark under 2 sails. Sailed back with 1/2 the main twisting off and broke the jib cunno string again  (we already knew the string I used was not strong enough from Sunday). Arrived back to the club last, but still in touch with the last vortex who got us due to the inability to bear-away for the finishing line without a jib!

Once again thanks to Peter, the modifed "Roland must be siting sideways" approach really improves things and our Gybes after coaching were truely slick  -  zero swims for us on Monday.

[andy_peters]

Just been back up to QMSC to fix the cleats.  The rest of the boat held together well despite both of us falling into every part of it on Sunday.  We too learnt loads but we are still near the bottom of a long and steep learning curve.  First race tomorrow evening so we'll see how that goes!