Dying bise

For this outing I was lucky to have Rob and Denise with me. Thank you for coming! They followed me on the Qboat, which allowed me to simulate real singlehanded conditions. The training was from 9.30am till 12.30pm.

The bise from Sunday was still blowing, after it had dropped during the night, but already less strong than the day before.

I was on the water from10am to 12pm

I started with a full main and the Jib, soon I felt like it would be better to use the Genoa to get more speed and better balance. I managed to change to the bigger Genoa, but it took me quite some time and I also did a involunarily tack at the end, which cost me lots of height and probably some places during a race.

Groundloss due to involuntary tack at the end of the sailchange

I also practised tacking, still room for improvement:

Steering with weight shifting
Rob also showed me how to steer the Surprise by changing the bodyweight, a technique that comes in very handy in case I have to work on the foredeck and the boat starts to turn....

It is pretty simple:

If you want to luff up the boat, you have to put your weight downwind
If you want to bear away, you have to move your weight upwind


Sounds easy. No?
The problem with this is that you have to react very fast (as soon as the boat starts to turn in a bad direction), if you wait to long, you wont be able to do anything anymore with your weight and you have to rush back to the tiller. A good reason to be very focused and check the bearing all the time while working on the foredeck.

I also practised more gybing and hoisting and lowering the spinnaker several times