ACF Sailing – Update 25-26th January 2020
First successful weekend of 2020

Dear Sailors and Supporters,

The only thing that could have made our first weekend back on the water in 2020 better would have been more Sunshine because it wasn’t event cold. With a nice light breeze on Saturday and stronger winds on the Sunday which lead to a perfect weekend of progression.

Saturday was very light and with everyone being rusty from a long time off the water over Christmas and the New Year. We kicked off the day gently with some simple tacking and gybing warming up the crew with all having a go in each position. This became a nice concentration task as they were getting further up wind the breeze became light and fluky and crew weight needing to move around and helms staying focused on their upwind sailing.

The shifty light conditions also brought a nice calm environment for our training skippers who needed to try and not think about the racing line out of the tide which they’ve been learning about and focus on not getting caught in the light winds, but also so the participant on the helm had many opportunities to tack as much as possible gaining more experience.

Saturday ended with a slow refresher in putting spinnakers up and down, under no pressure except a small sailing area. And for 1 it was their first time on the helm with the spinnaker up.

Sunday was a breeze on day, but more than manageable, just a little gusty close to Cowes due to the wind coming over the top and bouncing down. We only took 1 boat out on Sunday with the aim of slowing things down; Matt took the helm and briefed the crew on how this was about gaining experiences.

E.g. when it’s windy, things tend to go wrong more often. The key is how we act and how we respond to problems, also how we work as a team. Sailing in strong winds when things go wrong is problem solving on the fly. Meaning often a lot of trial and error can be involved and you need to always put your safety first, thus no matter what, you have to look after number one before you can look after your team.

This doesn’t mean don’t do anything to help others, it means 1 hand for you, and 1 hand for the boat. Just we don’t like that term very much at ACF as we don’t always have hands let alone being able to offer them to others. So this also comes down to when on the helm, how you can help your crew by keeping the boat on a stable platform preventing them falling over.

We managed to achieve the spinnaker hoists and drops many times including gybing, with all having ago on the helm. And also many tacks and gybes in the stronger breeze (lack of photos due to Matt sailing). Sadly as we were getting close to ending our day one major thing went wrong, as you have a blind helm and blind person gybing the pole, something is bound to go wrong. And thus the spinnaker pole ended with the sail wrapping around the end of the pole and catching it causing a tiny hole… but we all know what happens to tiny holes in kites… They often get bigger quickly. But the crew did a great job and responded fast, getting down the spinnaker and recovering from the situation before the damage became too great.

Then we ended our day sailing back across the Solent, with Matt jumping out of the boat into the RIB with 3 of our regular Visually Impaired Sailors sailing the boat solo, tacking up back towards Cowes in the increasing breeze. Check out the attached video here or on Facebook to see how well they tack the boat, much better than some able sailors we must say!

If you’re reading this, missing the water or not getting enough time out and would like to get out sailing in this year, disabled or able then do get in touch via info@acfsailing.org or visit our website www.acfsailing.org for more information.

Huge thank you to all of our supporters who help make this happen and keeping us going.

We can’t wait to get back out on the 8-9th Feb plus a great year ahead.

Yours sincerely,

The ACF Sailing Team

Location

Cowes Corinthian Yacht Club