Braving the cold!

We had a few visitors at BCYC today. Adam May, Katherine Knight and Robin Wood (sailing Tom Whichers' old Axiom4) joined Alan, Martin and myself for what was intended to be a group tune up but the weather soon put paid to that.

A very twitchy northerly, occasionally southerly, occasionally easterly and mostly non-existant breeze joined by air temperatures under 5 degrees and water temp very similar meant we were all very reluctant to go anywhere near the water. Yet there is something about Mothing that makes the bleakest weather seem optimistic and those brief moments of foiling served as a reminder of why we bothered getting out of bed!
There were occasional moments where sanity was questioned, like the time that Adam and myself were sailing towards each other upwind on the same tack. and shortly after I had to duck and the boat tacked nicely without so much as a twitch of the helm...

Robin Wood is quickly getting the hang of foiling after only his second outing in the boat looking in great control and just having to worry about the corners.

Valuable lessons were learned however - short wands are not very good and a quick dip in the lake with my Gerber was needed to sort that out.
We also learned that in order to get Tom Whicher anywhere near a sailing club on time is to tell him its the previous day and book him a BnB somewhere. He rocked up at close to 4 with his boat in tow, claiming that he had to stop for a nap. He might be back for a sail with me tomorrow morning, but I will just hope he turns up for a cuppa in the afternoon...

I'm still trying to put together some winter dates for training, but this end of the year is shaping up to be a pretty busy time and free days are hard to come by!