I didn't have a good night's sleep, my mind kept thinking about the training, and talking to my shipmates it seems that none of us did really sleep well, I guess we were all anxious to get started. Today it was our turn to be "cookies" (we discussed the issue of the term "mothers" being outdated and not really appropriate in our age, Hannah said that she liked to used Cookies and we adopted this), so we started the day by preparing toast for breakfast. My team mate was Toesie and I really enjoy working with her, she is real fun, attentive and full of good ideas.
After breakfast we did further security talks and took a look at the engine, doing the famous IWOBBLEDU routine. I really like that in the 70s the engine is in its own room, it makes it much easier to access it and to check stuff. We also did a full review of all the MOB procedure and of all the roles and tasks involved.
After lunch we finally left the dock and went sailing. The manoeuvre to get out of the dock was not easy at all but Hannah nailed it, she demonstrated an amazing control of the boat and she would continue to do so in the following days, performing some hair raising movements perfectly executed to the inch.
On the way out of the dock I was able to say hello to Nano, one of the skippers of the race. He was the AQP for Punta del Este in last year's race and from following their blogs I know that he is a really nice guy, so it was great to be able to greet him.
After lunch we finally left the dock and went sailing. The manoeuvre to get out of the dock was not easy at all but Hannah nailed it, she demonstrated an amazing control of the boat and she would continue to do so in the following days, performing some hair raising movements perfectly executed to the inch.
On the way out of the dock I was able to say hello to Nano, one of the skippers of the race. He was the AQP for Punta del Este in last year's race and from following their blogs I know that he is a really nice guy, so it was great to be able to greet him.
We hoisted the mainsail with three reefs, the staysail and a storm jib in the place of the yankee. It was quite windy, around 30 knots. These yachts really heel over when there is a lot of wind, so you need to make sure that your sail plan is not overpowered. Even with such a small sail plan we were fully heeled over and sailing fast.
The goal of the day was to do a full review of what we had learned in previous training weeks, specially everything related to tacking. So we tacked and tacked and tacked until the sentence "Ready to tack, Runner back" became etched in our minds. I was feeling a bit rusty and it took me a while to get fully confident in what I was doing.
At the end of the day I got the opportunity to do some helming and I had a great time controlling this powerful yacht. Definitely the helming position is much more comfortable than on the 68s and being able to helm on any of the two sides is really great.
Then we did our first MOB procedure. It all went more or less well, the only issue is that somehow we took a long time to be able to drop the staysail, but we were able to recover Bob in a reasonable amount of time. In fact we were very close to him all the time and had to do several passes until everything was ready to recover him.
While everyone started preparing the boat to go back to the Gosport marina, me and Toesie started preparing our dinner. By the time we docked, dinner was ready and we were able to eat and then do a quick review of the day. Doing the dishes felt like an eternity, this is going to be a real pain when we have more than 20 people on board during the race! A quick shower and an early lie down, with the news that we were expecting really bad weather the next day...
The goal of the day was to do a full review of what we had learned in previous training weeks, specially everything related to tacking. So we tacked and tacked and tacked until the sentence "Ready to tack, Runner back" became etched in our minds. I was feeling a bit rusty and it took me a while to get fully confident in what I was doing.
At the end of the day I got the opportunity to do some helming and I had a great time controlling this powerful yacht. Definitely the helming position is much more comfortable than on the 68s and being able to helm on any of the two sides is really great.
Then we did our first MOB procedure. It all went more or less well, the only issue is that somehow we took a long time to be able to drop the staysail, but we were able to recover Bob in a reasonable amount of time. In fact we were very close to him all the time and had to do several passes until everything was ready to recover him.
While everyone started preparing the boat to go back to the Gosport marina, me and Toesie started preparing our dinner. By the time we docked, dinner was ready and we were able to eat and then do a quick review of the day. Doing the dishes felt like an eternity, this is going to be a real pain when we have more than 20 people on board during the race! A quick shower and an early lie down, with the news that we were expecting really bad weather the next day...
