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…

Most recently, we went out in the Tasar last Thursday evening at the club. It was quite gusty, a bit chilly and not that many people went out, but I have to admit, the speeds you can get up to when the weather is that windy make it really quite fun. I have to admit, I wasn’t really in the mood when we went out, I was feeling tired and grumpy although I am not sure why, but when you hit those kind of exhilarating speeds, and the boat actually lifts out the water, you can’t help but smile and enjoy it! Even though the boom swung round during a jibe at one point and whacked me on the top of my head, I still enjoyed it overall. I’ve still got a bump now… Dan thought we must have done very well because we were just a little behind an RS100 for the whole race, unfortunately, he beat us by 28 seconds in the end and we came 3rd, a contender taking the top spot. We have come up with a list of all the things we need to do in order to improve and beat the RS100 next time though:

1. Practice! I need to get improve how I move across the boat and deal with the mast spanner. In fact, I apparently need to sort the spanner first, and then pull the jib in (I just hate it flapping!). I am also very conscious about slipping all the time as I have very cheap boots which leads me to:
2. Buy better boots for me – so I doesn’t keep slipping and almost falling out! Almost happened twice last Thursday.
3. Attend some events as that is the best way to get in practice and pick up tips from other boats.
4. Save up for the better sails. I believe they are called Mylar sails. They are quite a lot of money, but should make a huge difference, and also mean we can store the boat with the mast up (not that, that is really important…). As there are more boats who sail competitively with these sails than without, the handicap is more skewed to Tasars with these sails, which means that with our current sails, we are at a disadvantage which is why we don’t do as well as we should in the races, because we are not as fast as our handicap thinks we are.

I’ll try and keep this better updated, with all that is going on, we haven’t been out as often as we would like. Sailing at Hythe won’t be going on for much longer as we come into winter however I think a possible plan is to get me a dry suit and then join up at Bough Beech, an inland lake 🙂