Learning to helm

That's what I am trying to do :-)

"Normally" or generally expected the last years is that the crew does the main sheeting also. Since I am not used to that and since Gill, being male, has more power, we decided to try to switch roles. So Gill would be crew and I'd skipper.

Well, I think I would like it, but I stil have a lot to learn to be as good a skipper as Gill is right now. This weekend I had my first "full" try out. I beach started as a skipper and I came back to shore after 2 hours, still being the skipper. I practiced upwind, tacks, downwind with kite and gybes.

It all went well and I was thrilled to skipper with the kite up, it is one hell of a kick when you feel the hull going up and trying to stay there!!! Mind you, there was very little wind (2 or sometimes 3 bft, max. 10 knots) and we enjoyed a flat sea (for once) so I'll still have to see how it goes with rough seas and alot of wind...

Club championship 2007

As tradition wants, we had our annual club championship on the 29th of September.

Conditions were rough (lots of wind and waves, we had spring tide just the day before) and we started off really bad. A bit our own fault because we decided to test a longer spinnaker sheet (so I could have enough sheet when on the wire) but after we snuffed the kite in the first lap, the spinnaker sheet got caught behind the hull and Gill had to go out in front on the hull to get the sheet and shorten it. The 2nd lap we did not sail, so a first DNF. Luckilly we managed to do 4 rounds so we had this first desastrous lap as a trow out.

Scores are not online yet. We finished 5th. Bart & Luc were 1st, Astrid en Thierry 2nd, Gert 3rd and someone else (sorry forgot) finished 4th. As soon as I have the scores I'll post them.

The evening ended well with some nice pizza and lots of beer (on the house, because of Wim&Astrid's and our good results the past season).