National 12 Coaching Session
12th May 2012
The day dawned bright and breezy……. Well……, it is better than ‘one dark,
stormy night….’ A coaching session for National 12 sailors was held upon
the Trent River in Long Eaton, hosted by Trent Valley Sailing Club;
a club with long, long memory and association with the N12 class.
Eight boats, with helms and crews, arrived to take full advantage of the
gems of knowledge, skill and education provided by David Peacock and
Kevan Bloor.
Due to the recent significant rainfall in the East Midlands, the Trent
was doing her best to make this far more interesting than usual.
There were comments about when is high water – ‘last Thursday evening’
came the reply from Paul Turner; and if the tide does turn “we are in
serious trouble”.
The morning was spent very usefully finding out how to attack this
stretch of water. After an initial foray by all participants, many
of whom were to be heard commenting upon the difficulty of going
forward, David has us all back ashore to regroup and to give guidance
about how to tackle the conditions. His best quote ‘don’t let it
beat you, you beat it’. So off we went again to see if we could do
any better: I think we did. Certainly it was a good occasion to
learn how to take on the challenge of river sailing.
In the afternoon, we were all treated to a great session by Kevan Bloor
upon how to set our boats up to take on such conditions. Both
David and Kevan gave us ideas, suggestions, clues and useful sailing
tips which could all be translated to any conditions, not just those for
river sailing. My lasting visual memory is of David showing us how
far off he can let his shrouds when on a run!!!!! – yikes – as a crew in
a vintage boat there are only 2 options – ON or OFF – so this was a
revelation – muscles boxes ??Paul??
We followed this up with some short course racing to bring it all
together.
I think all who attended would agree we enjoyed the day. The short
races at the end of the day were much fun, although as a hardened Trent
River sailor I could be accused of not being too sympathetic, however I
could really see the change in all participants. The rictus grins
of fear had changed into the smiles of enjoyment – possibly…..
Many thanks to :
David Peacock for his instruction and facilitation of the day
Kevan Bloor for excellent knowledge on tuning, sail setting etc
Janet Bloor for photographic record of the day (which will be
added to this report, soon) Steph Marshall for driving the safety boat –
thankfully she had little to do but entertain David.
Report by Christine Preston
N12 Class Rep. Trent Valley Sailing Club
