Grafham Water Sailing Club

Archive for the ‘Training’ Category

Don’t forget that “Beginner Race Training” is running. The purpose of these sessions is to introduce the way that we run racing at Grafham and to give you a chance to learn or brush up on your sailing skills for racing. This is is not a “how to sail” course, the assumption is that you already know how to sail your boat and that you now want to move into racing or at least try it out in an unpressurised environment.
All are welcome to these sessions. Pre-booking is not obligatory but it would be really helpful if you could let us know in advance if possible. Please email kim.harris [at] grafham.org or let the office know. The dates are shown on the panel with this article.
Also, you do not have to attend all the sessions but there will be some progression and skill development throughout the season so it will be worthwhile to attend as many as you can. Do not worry if you have missed early ones, you are welcome to join in at any time.
Please be rigged and changed and ready to go at 13:30 in the wet bar for each session. There will be a short briefing and then straight on the water.
I look forward to seeing you all there. Kim Harris

The gods were shining on us for a change and we had an ideal day for the training day run by the handicap fleet on Saturday. We had light winds in the morning, increasing to a fair breeze in the afternoon for some practice races.

After some concerns during the planning stages about viability, we ended up with quite a good turnout in a mixture of boats. These were an RS600, a 470, three Laser Picos, a Laser Vago, a Laser 2000, a Topper and a Dart 16 with a Laser Stratos joining in for the afternoon. With coaching by Graham Kirkup who is a member of the fleet and a very experienced Enterprise sailor our sailors learnt the basics of race starts, mark rounding, finishes and some boat handling including stopping and starting the boat, tacking quickly on demand and some tactics.

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