My living room is not a sail loft
After having had the chance to intensely test out my storm jib during training last november I realized that I needed two dyneema strops to be able to easily and properly attach the storm jib.
One at the head to basically move the luff of the sail further up so when set the halyard is attached at the top of the babystay. This way the halyard can actually tighten the luff instead of just pulling the babystay up.
The other one at the tack to move the tack higher above deck. This way the carts for the genoa sheets can also be used for the storm jib effectively.
While doing that job in my living room I realized the sails don’t actually look that big while on board or in the sail loft so I’m glad I don’t have to carry out any similar work at home on my big solent or my main – that would become really tricky.
Training with Lorient Grand-Large / Tanguy Leglatin
It’s been a bit quiet here the last few months which was due to lack of time but not lack of sailing (luckily).
From october till early december I had the pleasure of participating in the training series organized by Lorient Grand-Large with world-class trainer Tanguy Leglatin.
I benefitted hugely from the training and even though at times it felt like I had to learn sailing from scratch I am sure I could not have figured out in a year what Tanguy taught me in those four weekends.
All the training sessions were doublehanded and I was lucky to find nice and fun crew in Katrina (www.katrinahamracing.com), my buddy Marten and Becky (www.beckyscottracing.com) and Nikki (www.nikkicurwen.com) with the Artemis Offshore Academy.
The weather offered us its full spectrum from absolute calm to 35 knots of wind and rain which allowed us to train our lee trim as well as reefing extensively.
Currently it’s time for boatwork, the seemingly neverending todo-list (and even worse: shopping-list) is starting to get smaller and the missing equipment is arriving as well.
End of january I am going to be back in france to get the boat ready for the new season, some training in february and march and then in april the new season officially begins with the first races of the atlantic coast.
Stay tuned for more news of smaller and larger modifications on board. In the meantime here’s my (first!) sailing video with photos and shots from the training and the 2012 season: