Practice makes perfect.
It is said that you need 10.000 hours of any specific activity to master it.
It is said that the more you practice, the luckier you get.
When it comes to sailing, time on the water clearly pays off.
Not having grown up sailing dingies, we are now trying to catch up with our 10k hours quota. Floating around and just being on the water, while very relaxing, does not significantly steepen the learning curve.
So how do we structure our training?
What then?
We splash Veloce early and take her up late in the season. “Early”´means about 9 weeks before the first regatta. During this time, we sail at least once a week.
Just “going sailing” is great, but not what we are looking for here. Instead, we lay out a plan during the winter and blindly follow it.
Here’s the plan
- 2 times to get up to speed. New sails, rig tuning, instruments calibration, test winter upgrades. Really, this could be considered an extension of “boat preparation”. We reserve 2 sessions as we do want to take our time.
- 3 times speed training. We try to work with speed at all times, however 3 sessions are reserved to training boat speed and marking lines and scales. We also make sure to be on the water at least once in super light air and once in heavy weather.
- 2 times manoeuvres. These include hoisting and dousing spinnaker to leeward and windward several times; main reefing, jib reefing, jib change; heaving to. Usually one whole session is dedicated to spinnaker and one to reefing and changing sails.
- 1 time navigation. We aim at 2 objectives: 1) we decide a something to round a few miles away, decide and sail a route and compare with routeing software; 2) turn off layline projections on the plotter and try to be as accurate as possible “analogically”.
- 1 time with a coach aboard. This is very giving and has often to do with communication between skipper and co-skipper.
Our “after season” sessions have been way less effective and more “just going sailing” oriented.
On the wish list
We would like to introduce at least 2 additional sessions, but they are difficult to execute as only crew. The first is safety practice. Training MOB, steering with means other than rudder, etc. While this would be invaluable, I feel that not done properly, such actives could be more dangerous than else. We are after all only 2 people aboard, no other boats around, in freezing cold waters.
The second would be a clinic. Training speed with a coach or sailmaker on the water helping out would be immensely valuable. Nevertheless, difficult to motivate as only crew being coached.
Worth spending a word on what we are not training:
Starts. We train them at our club races on Tuesday evenings.
Tactics. For obvious reasons… with no other boats around.
How does you training routine look like?