Published by the Open Canoe Sailing Group

Training Meet - The Tea Shops Of Coniston (JeffB)

The weekend of June saw eighteen participants and about 15 boats gathered at Coniston Hall campsite for a training meet organised by Steve and Keith.

Saturday morning saw us gathered on the shore for a session on sail control where Steve, DaveS and other members shared their experience. I knew the theory, but also knew I was not very good at putting it into practice. Seeing it all demonstrated on the beach was a great eye opener and I hope I will be better at pulling the various strings at the right time in future.

By this time the wind had got up a little and the next exercise was sailing around a triangular course and practicing tacking, gybing and sailing downwind, first one way round the course and

then the other. This kept Ellen busy and I stayed ashore; my helpful advice does not help at critical

moments and anyway sorting things out for yourself is by far the best way to learn.

Later we all sailed across to Brantwood, ostensibly to practice landing on and getting off a lee shore, but I suspect this was really just a cover for a visit to the cafe. We all arrived in

fairly good order and, after a break, all managed to get off again.

Sunday again started with little wind. This gave Steve the opportunity to set another teashop related objective - paddle to the Blue Bird Cafe. Paddling various distances, from various starting configurations, and in various conditions, are requirements of the different competence levels - Level 1 being to paddle half a mile without rig, in calm conditions, which is what we certainly had.

After a leisurely tea and cake session, the wind was getting up

enough to sail again and we set off back again towards the campsite. This gave people the chance to practice what they had been learning. Jan offered to sail around the course and Ellen followed, copying Jan, and found this to be a very helpful technique (doesn't seem to work very well for me in races though). Others went to Brantwood for more cafe time and also sailed down to Peel Island.

As Keith summed up the learning points for the weekend:

It was a great weekend. Many thanks to Keith and Steve for the effort they put in. Ellen commented that she thought she hadn't learnt much intellectually, but had gained a lot by feeling. Steve immediately intellectualised this by calling it kinaesthetic learning - once an instructor, always an instructor!

Our Hols In Tayvallich (EllenB)

In the last week of May the club met at Tayvallich on Loch Sween. It was wet and very windy for most of the week, but not too cold so we didn't mind much as we had our wonderful dry suits

(speak for yourself, Ed.)

On the Sunday DaveM in his Raptor and Jeff and I in Njuzu tried to sail south to Castle Sween near the mouth of the loch. We headed down the east shore inside Eileen Loain where it was slightly sheltered but

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