Saturday saw 7 Rio hopefuls in the Sprint 15 class receive some first class training from Messrs Boardman, Watson and Carter in a "fresh" some would say "arctic" force 4. Just another summer day at Warley Moor.
The morning saw all helms lining their steeds up in the rigging area, optimising mast rake and checking rudder alignment, as well as devouring vast amounts of technical stuff - apparently a leech is just as critical to cat speed as it was to early medicine.
After a late lunch of stuffed vine leaves and baguettes to match the Mediterranean conditions, the fleet hammered onto the water in a series of short races accompanied by more brilliant nuggets of advice from the safety boats.
A slight misjudgement from Margrave on the first start resulted in his bow being peeled apart by Davison's rudder stock, duck tape soon had him back on the water. Davison's apparently magnetic boat also attracted Walker to attempt to conjoin vessels.
Although capsize recovery was on the agenda, only Meek seemed to want to improve this skill, and in doing so swung from ankle entangled in rope for a second before testing the water, spraining it nicely in the process. Hustler, unusually in a white boat, was next to self harm by headbutting his mainsheet blocks during a tack and receiving an ugly Action Man type gash across his temple. It would seem our rugged sailor quite approved of this new, butch, feature as he was clocked checking himself in the mirror in the changing rooms just a bit longer than was necessary.
All in all a fantastic day, huge thanks to Robin, Charles and to the other grown ups in Cats who gave up their time to help those with much less experience.
