Training in Weymouth

After 2 and half weeks of full-time sailing between the Delta Lloyd Regatta and the Sail for Gold, Zander and Jesse took a needed hiatus from the 49er. Zander headed to Ireland and scored some good surf while Jesse went to Greece and Turkey in search of that rare GBR thing of warm weather. Since we did not want to be out of the boat for more than two weeks, following our “separation”, we planned a training week in Weymouth before our departure for the Europeans in Finland.

The weather cooperated for our week, leaving us with good breeze and, surprisingly, sunshine! Training-wise, it was certainly a success as we were very productive with our time for the five days with a couple of double sessions crammed in there. Though we were sailing by ourselves, we were busy working on boat handling (never gets old in the 49er!) and testing some rig settings. For example, we did gybe set after gybe set and leeward mark rounding after leeward mark rounding; essentially trying to engrave the motions into our mind. We also did the basics, like figure 8 drill repetitively in the beginning of the session to get our mechanics down.

Rig-wise, we were testing out some settings in our most problematic condition of 8-12 knots. Thankfully the breeze for the majority of the week was this condition! You can only do so much with rig tune by yourself, but it was amazing the changes we could feel tinkering with the rig (playing with bend, cap shroud tension, primary shroud tension, etc). Hopefully this help us as we go into the ultra competitive European Champs (2nd only to the Worlds in terms of competition) and get our speed dialed in whatever conditions we get.

So, onto Finland tomorrow with a British team. The long drive of nearly 30 hrs will be segmented by two ferry rides seeing us arrive sometime Monday evening. We will no doubt need some rest after the drive! However, given our time frame, we will have plenty of time to get rested and train a couple times before the European Championship begins on Friday the 8th. Stay posted!