Sailing

[azziria]

Fantastic first weekend out on the water - learnt a huge amount, but there's still a lot to learn. We had fabulous weather, too, although we could have done with a bit more wind on Saturday.

She's a big boat (72') so she has all the bits that the smaller boats I've sailed have, and then some. So just learning which rope is which and which does what is the first challenge. For example, she's a cutter rig, which means she carries two headsails (a Yankee on the front and a smaller staysail behind it) and has running backstays to prevent the staysail bending the mast forward. So when you tack, instead of just needing two people to bring the headsails across (one to let fly the active sheet and one to haul on the lazy sheet), you need six (two on the Yankee sheets, two on the staysail sheets, and two to rearrange the running backstays). That's a lot more ropes and winches, and you each need to know them all so that you know where to go and what to do at the opportune moment.

We put her through pretty much all the manoeuvres we'll need when racing; tacking, gybing, trimming sails, getting the spinnaker up and then gybing it (one of the trickiest things to do, apparently).

I've never sailed with a spinnaker before (for those who don't know, the spinnaker, or kite, is the big and often brightly-coloured balloon-like sail you often see on racing yachts). On a yacht the size of ours the spinnaker is a huge piece of canvas, unwieldy and unpredictable due to it's sheer size, and handling it takes experience and watchful attention at all times. Getting it up is one challenge, getting it down involves taking it right below and pulling it aft right through the accommodation (the internal layout of the boat has been designed specifically to allow this), and getting it back in the sail bag is a bitch. Basically spinnakers are a pain but they let you fly in light airs, so they come under the heading of 'necessary evil' I guess.

Being fit was good, getting even fitter is a good plan, and although I ache in odd places I don't ache as much as I thought I would, which is encouraging. I'm also seriously hungry in a good I've-done-some-serious-physical-exercise sort of way.

Highlight of the weekend had to be the ice cream boat, though - a small motor launch with a plastic ice cream cone stuck on the wheelhouse roof that goes around between the moored and anchored boats selling ice creams and ice lollies. Just what we needed on a hot and hard working Saturday afternoon afloat ... :)

First qualifying race next weekend, and lots more to learn...

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