My first day sailing at an Optimist Selection Trials. Wow what a day.
Thursday night we stayed at my Grandparents house which is about and hour and a bit away from Weymouth. Great Roast beef dinner, the perfect perpartion for the big event. Friday morning it was a quick blast down to Weymouth and arrived in good time for measurement and registration.
We got on the water at about 1045 in time for the first raced scheduled for 1200. I was very excited and quite nervous. I'm in a fleet of 78 boats and everyone around me is mostly national, intermediate or development squad sailors. Also I'm one of the youngest sailors and probably the smallest.
We had a nice breeze 12-15knts, which means flat hiking for me but not for most of the others! The starts were quite intimidating but mine were OK. The big thing about today was the size of the courses. They were huge, much larger than anything I've ever done before. Each race lasted about 1 hour and the up wind legs went on for ever. Down wind was great though and I was able to pick up places.
Friday my results were 11, 21, 35, 14 and I'm 18th overall so a pretty good start. It was great racing and I really enjoyed it and great to be up there mixing it with the national squad sailors. In one race I covered and overtook one of the sailors who went to the Worlds last year, that made me smile a lot.
Saturday the wind is forecast to be stronger and we might be racing out in Weymouth Bay so could be a tough day and might need my sail and best sail and bail techniques.
On the awesometer today was an 8/10,
No comments:
Post a Comment