Kite Surfing! A fantastic new hobby to add to the ever growing list ;-)

After getting married on the 28th May 2016, Charlotte and I decided on a 2 week honeymoon to Mauritius at the beginning of July.

This was after many discussions about where to go, somewhere hot, somewhere with beaches, somewhere to relax etc. Importantly for me I also wanted somewhere I/we could do activities. Charlotte found Mauritius and it fitted the bill excellently. She proposed the idea to me by simply mentioning that it is one of the best places in the world to wind and kite surf – so obviously I was sold! Mauritius is one of the best places for wind and kite surfing in the world as the conditions are ideal with flat, shallow water as the island is surrounded by a lagoon, and great wind. This makes it ideal for beginners as well as more experienced kite surfers so of course I could not go to Mauritius and not learn how to kite surf! I’ve been wanting to learn to kite surf for years but could not justify the expense of taking lessons in the UK. It was far better value to take lessons in Mauritius and unlike the UK, you cannot complain about the conditions or the weather, and the scenery is just fantastic!

All around Catch Up

Well it has been a while since I last posted and I should be posting more regularly. However, this has been a rather busy year as I got married and missed the B14 World Championships to go on Honeymoon in Mauritius instead. To make up for missing the Worlds however, I had some Kite Surfing lessons whilst on Honeymoon and have since bought all the gear so I will certainly start writing some posts about that.

Since my last post I have taken part in the B14 Inlands in Datchet. These were a semi success but the result was a little too ‘standard’ for my liking. We had some good upwind and downwind legs but sadly our starts left a lot to be desired.

Club Sailing at Hythe

Well a few more weeks have passed since my last post. I have had 3 outings in various boats since then.

I sailed with Andrew Thompson for the first time in 6 years on a Thursday (21st April) evening race. We used to sail a B14 and a Laser 3000 together and were almost unbeatable in the 3000. This time we sailed mine and Charlotte’s Tasar, it was just about breezy enough to sit on the side and hike and we completed the 3 laps of the triangle-sausage course with no real problems with the exception of breaking the kicker, but it needed replacing anyway. We finished third on the water and third on handicap after the two contenders sailed by Tom Coley and Adrian Smith. I believe we were only 13 seconds behind Tom!

A new year and a new season.

On the 3rd April this year, Dan and I went out in the Tasar for the first time this year. My boots are literally falling apart, my gloves were so hard I could barely hold on to the ropes, and it was cold! But, it was great fun!

I still have so much to learn in terms of the theory, honestly if you were to put me at the helm I don’t think I’d last two minutes. In fact, I think I have forgotten everything I learnt last year! It doesn’t seem to matter too much if I’m always going to be the crew though, as so long as I know what I am meant to do and when (or so long as I do as Dan says), we still seem to do rather well, achieving third place behind the two contenders. As Dan said, contenders are hard to beat on a breezy day.

Stokes Bay and Club Sailing

Sadly I missed the opening B14 event of this year at Rutland as I had laser eye surgery under 2 weeks before and then picked up a cold.

I did however take part in the Stokes Bay event last weekend and it went well. Considering that Dan and I had not sailed since the Europeans at Rock sailing club last September I was pleased with a result of 10th out of 16 boats. We were sailing with a new rig (that I was not entirely happy with the setup of) and the conditions were not ideal with an ambiant temperature of less than 10 degrees celsius it was cold.

Icicle Series

A long overdue catchup…

Well over the winter I have been sailing this year. I took part in most of the Icicle Series at Bough Beech Sailing Club.

I took part in each of the morning races but due to the weather and other factors I was unable to take part in the afternoons.

For this I sailed the Laser, this is a boat that I acquired last May in a swap for the RS800 that I owned. The sail was in particularly poor condition and I did struggle to attain any reasonable results with it in the lighter conditions. As a result of this I placed an order for a new Maldon Sailboats replica sail of the latest design. This was going to take a few weeks to arrive. When the sail did finally arrive I was able to take it out for the last weekends sailing and it made a marked improvement. I was able to point as high as the other boats and had much better boat speed than before. This meant that instead of struggling to keep up with the other boats I was at the front of the pack and finished first Laser in that race.

Overall the Icicle series lived up to its name, it was cold and 1 week we even had snow. My results may not have been that good but it was an enjoyable series of races.

 

Updates

Apologies for not posting for a while, we have been so busy and time just seems to fly at the moment!

An update of what is happening though. We are selling the National 12 :-(. Sad but has to be done. The Tasar is a much better boat for us, Dan is just generally in love with it, the only thing that could make it better would be if it had a spinnaker, and I prefer sailing it as I find cleating the jib sheets much easier. The National 12 has been a labour of love over the past 3 years and we hope she will go to a good home, we would love to keep her, however we don’t have the space to keep her and we need the money.

Moving on to happier things, Dan has recently been to the B14 European Championships down in Rock, Cornwall. I was going to go with him but decided at the last minute that it’s not a world that I am a part of. I would rather be in one of the boats rather than jealously watching from the shore :-P. I will therefore allow him to regale all of the tales of that trip of which there were a few…

We’ve got a Tasar!

Dan had been thinking about getting a Tasar for us to sail for a while as apparently I am learning quite fast and he wanted a boat that was a little more suitable for us than the 12. I still love the 12, it’s been a labour of love over the past 3 years to get it transformed from the rotten mess it was to what it is now, but oh how I do like this boat!

We have sailed the Tasar twice since we bought it on the 6th June, once on the 7th June, and then again on the 11th June.

I will talk about our first outing first. I really enjoyed this sail, when we first went out though, the water was like a mirror it was so calm. I think it took us about 10 minutes to drift out to the start line at what felt like a snails pace, but not long after we got out there, the wind did start to pick up. All of a sudden, it came from one direction and then another, it almost caused us to go over and did cause a couple of others to go. We soon got the hang of it though and it was a great race, and we came 2nd! I think it is all down to Dan to be honest as he knows what he is doing. Something I have realised I really need to get to grips with is the theory behind sailing, everything to do with the wind and the tides. Wind is obvious, but I haven’t really figured out how it affects where you have the sails, and I still get muddled about what is upwind and what is downwind, and when you do a tack and when you do a gybe. And then you have the tides, which contribute a lot to deciding what direction you want to point the boat. I noticed this a lot when we first took the Tasar out, this is because we need to go right around the bouey, but Dan had the boat very far to the wrong side because he assured me that the tide would have pushed us to the right side before we reach the bouey. I haven’t been sailing for very long but I feel like I ought to know all of this by now, so I think I will get Dan to explain it when we aren’t on the water, and then I’ll do a post around it to help my brain absorb all the information 🙂

Stokes Bay Photographer!

We are seriously lagging behind in writing up our posts, sorry about that! Although Dan is worse than me… I will nag him to write up his windsurfing and B14 Nationals post tonight/tomorrow.

Anyway, on the 29th -31st May, it was the B14 Nationals at Stokes Bay, and I was able to get out on the rescue boat on the Saturday to take pictures! It was my first time out on one of the rescue boats, although the organisers thought I had done it before so I had to let them know that I don’t actually have a power boat licence… It was great fun though, I was taken out to the committee boat at around 10.30am where I watched them co-ordinate setting up the course by dropping the boueys in very specific places in the water. They had various gadgets (old and new) to make sure they placed them in the correct places, I think I will need to watch it done a few more times to get more of an understanding of how it is done. The race began at 11.30am, and I was eventually able to get out on the second RIB about 20 minutes later, as a passenger of course. I got some great photos, although I was very biased towards Dan and Dan C… If I get a chance to go out on one of the boats again, I will try and get a wider range of photos for the class as I hadn’t realised they were relying on me for some photos as well! I only went out with the aim of getting photos for this blog. There were a few they must have like though as they made it onto yachtsandyachting.com.

In the Vision again

We had avoided taking the RS Vision out again, but a few weeks ago on the 24th May, we thought what the hell and went out in it again as the National 12 still wasn’t fixed and we are impatient people.

We aimed to get down to the club early so Dan could do some bimbling to try and improve the spinnaker, only we both overslept so weren’t quite as early as we would have liked. He still got a chance to bimble though and re-rigged the spinnaker and sprayed the kite with some silicone spray to try and make it easier for me to pull it in and out. This made such a difference! And I must say that the Vision has somewhat redeemed itself in my view. It is still a ridiculously heavy boat, but I am now able to successfully get the spinnaker in and out!

All of this paid off as we managed to achieve 3rd place on handicap among 12-14 boats :-D. I was very happy with that. We did have a few other problems though which meant we could possibly have done even better… The cleat which holds the spinnaker when up has worn through and does not hold the rope at the bottom anymore, we had to pull the kite all the way up, then ever so slightly let it down again so I could lightly pull the rope up in the cleat to allow it to hold, tedious or what? There is also a metal hoop part way up the mast where the jib halliard threads through, but somehow, and we have no idea how, the spinnaker sheet also got caught through this so we were unable to pull it up as high as it could go. I don’t think it had a huge impact, but it along with the cleat are yet two more things that need to be fixed on the club boat.

It was great fun though, and I am thrilled that we came 3rd!