Sunday, August 8, 2010

Aug 8 - Training in Weymouth

Jen here,

We've just wrapped up a week of training here in Weymouth and it's been a productive and positive week.  To start off, we had our new rudder head installed, received a new shipment of masts, booms, and spinnaker poles, and got to focus on sailing rather than boat work (well, once the rudder head was on at any rate).  We've been training with the boys' team from Halifax, Teddy and Jono.  Each day we launch together and work to tune up on long upwind legs. Then we sail together for the duration of our practices doing long runs, beats, and working on our tacks and gybes.  The practice races here seem to be closed, so our focus has shifted back to the basics: boat handling and speed.  Teddy and Jono have turned out to be great training partners, and so were the Canadian girls, Karen and Dana.  Unfortunately the girls went back to Canada so there are only the two teams here in Weymouth.                              

The rest of the Canadian Sailing Team is here as well.  We've caught up with a number of our Canadian pals and swapped stories of our respective venues such as Poland, Medemblik, and others. The consistent comment we keep hearing is "I hear it was nuking windy in Holland!"  Actually, the funniest thing about arriving in Weymouth was the day we had our rudder head installed.  We parked our boat at Sam's shop and when we arrived back, a good chunk of the 470 fleet was also parked outside his shop.  There were eight other 470's flipped over, still with their bow stickers on from Worlds, waiting to be repaired by Sam and his team.  He shook his head at us, "You lot could pay my annual salary with all your repair work!"  We wouldn't mind at all if Sam just followed the 470 fleet around and fixed our boats on a regular basis. 

Yesterday we also had the opportunity to meet Erik Stibbe.  Erik is a newly appointed Canadian coach who will be working out of Vancouver. Although he's here coaching the Lasers and Radials, he made some time to come and work with us on the water.   He was thorough.  After only about twenty minutes of working with us on the water, Erik took us through a debrief which lasted for about two hours!  Both he and his wife, Jenny, have lots of experience with 470's, and so we look forward to working with them as much as possible back in Canada.  


Racing starts tomorrow, so we'll be sure to keep you updated on how things are going.

Cheers,
Jen

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