ACF Sailing – Update 8-9th February 2020

Dear Sailors and Supporters,

Last weekend we took on storm Ciara and are proud to say we won. Okay we never actually took it on, we just didn’t let it put us off. The great thing about many different weather models is you can get a good picture of what is about to happen. But the important part is to monitor it closely, especially when big weather systems are coming through and often many windows of opportunities arise.

Saturday felt like late spring, it was warm with the sun shining and just a light breeze starting out the day that only gradually built holding off the storm until later that evening. We also had some guests come and join us from Sussex Yacht Club in preparation for their trip over again for Cowes Week later in the year.

Starting off as lightly as we could with a simple windward leeward course off of Cowes, we gradually practised putting the pole out, then the spinnaker up when ready, calmly with the aim of just remembering our routines.

Each skipper completed 2 laps with the wind building all of the time, normally we would have spiced things up but the increasing breeze did this for us. Enabling increased confidence within the crews, which in turn speed up the routines.

Competition… When you enjoy racing it’s really hard to not race anyone near to you (e.g. another boat). So as the fleet separated every now and again we just made the windward boat complete a 2 turn penalty. This was enough to bring the boats back together and between them created greater self pressure.

Due to the known forecast of Storm Ciara and that we were having the perfect day, we stayed on the water longer than usual to achieve as much as we could, but this time instead of being cold calling when we go home it was when individuals were getting tired. Tiredness started to undo the great work they all did and started creating spinnaker raps on both boats. For those unknown to this term, it’s when the spinnaker raps around the forestay in a huge knot but gybing the boat was enough to undo the mistakes by the wind spinning the spinnaker around the other way undoing the knot. This increased the tiredness and thus it was time to head home.

But before we did we had to have one final last race to put into practice what we had been doing and always ways find it funny that somehow the adrenaline kicks in and that sign of tiredness disappears. A huge well done to Spare Part, who went on to win the race, taking a really calm approach to their sailing working as a team and building on each other’s strengths especially when 1 person can’t see, 1 can’t hear, 1 with no legs and another able but English is not their first language.

With so many of the team over, we arranged a social in the club with a meal on the Saturday evening for the team and we can’t thank enough the CCYC Secretary, Wendy Owens who stepped up to volunteer to cook us all a fantastic dinner. Many don’t know but Wendy was an original founder of the foundation and we love seeing the support still there from all whom helped the foundation years ago.

Sunday was blown off as expected but those of us who had planned to sail still came along with a slightly later start time with the aim of much needed theory to increase their knowledge.

With many people knowing that sailing is like chess but with physical exertion and speed, on land we made up our own sailing style chess board which allowed us to focus on the decision making.

Keeping everything as close to real life tactics, strategy and rules as possible. The game created many opportunities to pause and discuss options. Thus from the most inexperience sailor to the most advanced it created both a fun learning and competitive environment with a lot of banter. Using plastic boats with grooves cut out so our blind sailors could feel the sail. We laid out some white boards with a grid drawn on, set a course and played away.

In the afternoon the CCYC held its members volunteer day which also create a great opportunity for us to support the club and network with future and existing volunteers which we look forward to seeing more of going forwards.

Huge thank you to everyone who came and made this weekend happen including Andy himself and wife Sue for coming and joining the team for the evening meal.

Also thanks to John Green Cowes for the fantastic photos from the shoreline at ‘Egypt Point’ which shows the fantastic progression of the sailors. Check out our Facebook page to see more www.facebook.com/acfsailing Not to mention the great video on board Spare Part.

We can’t wait to get back out on the water in two weekends time and hoping for another lucky weekend of wind.

If you reading this and would like to come and see or hear about what we are up too then please do get in touch via info@acfsailing.org as we’d love to hear from you.

Thank you all for your support.

Yours sincerely,

The ACF Sailing Team

Photo Credits to;
John Green Cowes (Face book and top left picture)
Laura Cammidge (top right and middle left pictures)
Ferenc Visztra (Video from on board)

Location

Cowes Corinthian Yacht Club