Work, Windsurfing and a Windy Rutland: All in Two Weeks.

The past few weeks have been pretty hectic so I apologise in advance since this is going to be a pretty long post. There was the Youth Nationals in Weymouth during the first week of the Easter holidays and then an Olympic National Ranker following on straight after. Then a couple of days desperately trying to fit in a few days of revision before an HPC training (an invitational training camp) at Rutland Water for the last weekend of the holidays.

During the Youths we had in between 4 to 8 knots every day with one day of no racing due to a mysteriously thick fog in Portland Harbour. My aims for the week were to get a transit and to actually use it on every start and also to not oversheet upwind. I would say that my transit taking was intermittent at best. I feel that my starts improved throughout the week, but this was probably more as a result of practise and me being more punchy and aggressive than of improved transit usage. As for the oversheeting, I have made steps to avoiding this by making a conscious effort to push out my back hand during lulls in the wind. Oversheeting is a big problem for me at present and something that I am working on almost every session, it involves pulling the sail too close towards you, which kills your speed and makes you go sideways.

The conditions the during the National Ranker were perfect, 15–17 kts both days and bright sunshine. Unfortunately during the Youths I made a bit of a mess of my feet meaning that I had to pull out of that last two races of the ranker. Even so I made good progress on my carve gybing in a pressured environment by being more aggressive when it comes to the rig flip. I also witnessed the results of the biggest smash up I have ever seen between two junior sailors (see photo below).

After all that excitement it was back to Yorkshire and some quick revision before HPC at Rutland Water. This HPC was such a great training weekend with 18 knts of wind on the Saturday; perfect for upwind tuning allowing me to practise on avoiding the dreaded oversheet. On the Sunday the wind was a bit lighter so we to focused on keeping the board planing on the daggerboard; much easier said than done!!! We also attempted a few rail rides which got some amusing looks from the topper sailors training next to us!!

Rail riding is an old school freestyle move, which involves balancing on the side of the board while sailing.

I have just gone on study leave for my AS levels and will unfortunately be missing out on a couple of competitions to focus on my exams. In the meantime, I am putting more of an emphisis on my fitness training so that when I return to competition I will have gained not lost over this time. Hope to see you all at an event in the future!!

Matt